Biking back to a memory of Kathy and the bullfrog

As summer peaks and edges toward autumn, and with winter not far ahead down the road, I cherish my morning bike ride more and more each day.

Early every morning, weather permitting, I ride out of Sun City southward along Sandwald Road all the way to Timber Creek and back, a roundtrip of a bit more than seven miles that lasts me the better part of an hour. I wish it were longer, but that’s as far as I can go in the countryside without too great a risk of being squashed like a bug by a truck or car.

I will miss those rides come winter, because a long bike ride all alone to start the day is a great way to get in touch with your inner self — and with your favorite memories.

And this morning, as I passed a little swampy patch at the side of the road, a harrumphing bullfrog brought a smile to my face, as the memory of a long-ago bullfrog came back to mind.

I was a 19-year-old college student at WIU in Macomb, and I was with my girlfriend Gail, who would later become my wife of 48 years. With us was Gail’s roommate, Kathy, a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty wearing shorts and a string bikini top.

I only mention that last detail because it will soon become important.

It was Saturday morning and we were splashing in the water of a small creek ambling to the La Moine River. The river was muddy, but this creek was clear water running over a sandy bottom. It was mostly shallow, but here and there along its length were pools deep enough to be crowded with catfish and carp, and that’s why I was there, to have a bit of fun with my fishing rod. The girls came along just to get their feet wet.

Somewhere along the way I met up with a bullfrog and was lucky enough to nab him. I searched for a way to hold him so I could show him to the girls, and I found a discarded bucket that had washed downstream and was caught in the tangle of shoreline brush. I also found a bit of rotten plastic tarp that I could use as a cover.

And so I plunked the bullfrog into the bucket, covered it up, and waited for the girls to catch up with me along the creek.

When they got there, I told them about my capture, and Kathy was excited to see it. She swept the cover off of the bucket —unfamiliar, I guess, with the nature of bullfrogs. This one, seeing the sky and a chance to escape, leaped straight up in the air, six feet or more, right into Kathy’s face.

Kathy, too, leaped into the air.

I stayed planted on my feet, because a 19-year-old boy isn’t going anywhere when a dark-haired buxom beauty in shorts and a skimpy bikini top starts jumping up and down. He’s going to stick around to see what happens next.

Gravity being what it is, Kathy couldn’t stay airborne for long, and she came back down. So, too, did the bullfrog — smack dab in the middle of Kathy’s bikini top, right between the two current occupants of that already strained garment.

And there it got stuck.

That sent Kathy jumping up and down all the more, screaming and slapping at her chest in a vain attempt to rectify the situation. I was more than willing to help, but I paused to ponder the ramifications of any action I might take. After all, she was the roommate of the girl I wanted to marry. And that girl was right there to witness whatever my hands did next.

And so I did nothing.

Oh, I watched with close attention to make sure the crisis wouldn’t turn into catastrophe — I owed Kathy that much. But peeping seemed the better choice than poking, pawing, or prodding, because it was clearly a situation that would remedy itself one way or another. A barely-there garment designed to house two plump occupants couldn’t accommodate three for much longer, what with all the jumping and the slapping. Simple physics dictated that any or all occupants might be evicted from the scant garb at any moment.

And as a young man with a great deal of respect for physics, biology, and all other sciences, I was anxious to see how the experiment would play out.

Unsuccessful with all the jumping and screaming and slapping, Kathy bent down, hunched her shoulders forward, and the bullfrog slipped out of the bikini top. It plopped into the water, dashed deep into a pool, and was gone. Gravity giveth, and it also taketh away.

It was, I guess, the optimal solution for the frog—and also for Kathy and Gail, though I think I might have voted for a slightly different outcome. I mean, sure, the main thing was that the frog got away unharmed. But… well, you know.

The whole encounter couldn’t have lasted more than five seconds or so — a blink of an eye, though it must have seemed an eternity to Kathy and the bullfrog.

But sometimes a few seconds can find a way to last forever, and that’s what happened with those few seconds.

Because just this morning, a harrumphing bullfrog brought a smile to an old man on a bike, returning him to an eye-blink moment more than a half-century back down the road.

TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.

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