The Pallid Ones

When I was a little boy, I ran almost naked in the rain. Crossing streams of water filled with small fishes and tadpoles. I never paid attention to their tiny tails, and how they depended on them to move forward, but when they got older, these tadpoles discovered feet and dumped their now useless tails. Who wanted to swim?

When I became a kid, I noticed how sickly the little boys would become after playing in the rain. I recognized that the fish swimming in the streams. formed from the rain, never modernized, and that they still used their tails to travel, that it never grew feet. The tadpoles were now bullfrogs and sat lazily swallowing flies. Would they never move on?

When I turned teenager it dawned on me how many germs were in the streams formed when it rains, and I hoped the government would open more clinics so that these little angels, playing in the rain, would not die. I understood how lucky were the fish that managed to escape using the only tail they had. They would be free to swim in cleaner waters.

I paid little attention to the grumpy frog, croaking his laments for getting so old so quickly before it could give its offspring a better legacy. Far better than webbed feet to walk and swim.

When I was a man I condemned the government for its failure to educate those innocent children on the danger of walking in the rain or playing in the dirty streams it created. I made sure that the public knew how many of them died during the government’s watch.

I tried to remember why the fish was special to me but concluded that there were millions of them and it was welcoming to my economic bottom line. So, it is better to educate one’s self on the best nets and hooks, to optimize each venture.

Yet I did remember clearly, how I killed a frog, skinning it alive. Then when I was satisfied that I knew all about its anatomy, sew it back together.  I am not sure when it died. Who cares, it's just a frog.

Now that I am a child, I have seen it all and decided that what’s done is done. Taxpayers pay far too much money trying to save those disrespectful, tiny, little brats.  By the time they can walk to the corner store, they want to teach you to suck an egg.

I no longer feel the raindrops, even though when they choose to fall, my bones pain and make me swear beneath my breath.  It beats down on the roof as usual, but I don’t sense it at all. I never like wearing that hearing aid.  Modernization can be such a curse.

 I am unsure how the fish manage to move beneath the water if it has no feet to walk. Nature can be such a humbug when it decides not to give you new gifts.

There is an animal that croaks beneath the stairs outside. I believe that it was sent to torture me.  To make sure that my crossing over does not go without paying my debts.

I am glad that I am not like him. I sit here with my pipe and eat grapes almost all day long. My skin is still pinned to my back. I am not covered with lumps of green grime.  Just less white and paler.

 And very soon, they would not see me anymore.