folks keep asking what's so scary about frogs. if i did know, i mightn't be so scared. i think the whole point of being scared is having no reason. and why should there be an explanation? if you have an explanation, that isn't fear, that's just logic. scared of spiders cos your brother turned your teddy bear into one? if you developed a fear of your brother, that's logic, but to be affectionate towards your brother for the rest of your life while going hysterical if a spider came near you? thurber, who always makes fun of popular psychoanalysis, in a similar vein: mr c fears women because as a child he was unexpectedly catapulted by an engine over the wall of a convent school into a mass of shrieking girls. that, thurber declares, is nonsense. if mr c had developed a fear of riding on mechanical contrivances instead, says thurber, now that would be perfectly rational. i have no memory of being catapulted into a writhing tank of frogs (damn shouldn't have written that, now i'll probably have a dream like that tonight) as a child or otherwise. nobody ever turned my teddy bear or storybook or typewriter into a frog. the kinds of stories i read as a child told me that frogs were good creatures - a friend of farmers and good swimmers. one of the sweetest series of children's books by arnold lobel was about the friendship between a frog and a toad, and i was very fond of those books, if i didn't have to look at the illustrations (those illustrations weren't too bad, actually, just as kermit the frog is tolerable if i didn't think i had to go too near him) but, i am inexplicably and deathly afraid of frogs and have been ever since i was very little. if a frog crossed the road ahead of me i would carefully wait till it's gone a long way away. i don't eat frog legs; i don't even let my chopsticks go near the stuff. i don't touch pictures of frogs, unless it's the kind in a children's book, and even then i try to put my fingers where the frog is not. i was hoping i didn't have to go to secondary school becos i was sure that i couldn't get out of dissecting a frog in bio lab (but minyin became my lab partner and all i had to do was go for a walk and come back and copy her drawings.) if people think that's bad, some folks i know are scared of peanut butter, and compared to that i think an aversion to frogs is mild. tjan asks what i would do about frog princes. let them stay frogs, of course. frogs turning into handsome strangers is vastly overrated. surely the reverse is what you should be worried about. i had a dream once of opening the door expecting my lover and instead a man-size frog in his clothes was standing there. that was not a good one.