The Frog Sadist

     My elders have often told me about how if a frog is put in a pot of hot water it will immediately hop out in a reflexive effort of self-preservation. If, however, a frog is placed in a pot of room-temperature water which is then slowly brought to a boil, it will remain submerged in the water until its insides literally boil.

     Now while this may be a great metaphor for how the slow descent into gloom and doom (typically from temptation or weakness of mental fortitude) is more perilous than the quick drop because the gradual change is almost impossible to detect, it always left me wondering- who the hell decided to boil a frog in the first place in order to arrive at such a grand metaphor?

     The other question that now plagues me, however, is why doesn’t anybody care about the frog that was dropped into the already tumultuous and scalding water of this frog-sadist’s maniacal pot of allegorical experimentation? The second one died, sure. This is sad and there is a lesson to be learned from it: carry a metaphorical thermometer for the literal problems that the world gives you.

     But what about the first frog that is limping away (...limp-hopping?) from the sadist’s kitchen with burns all over his body, wondering what in Kermit’s name just happened to him with every ounce of processing power his tiny brain can muster? Does this frog ultimately reach a much more painful and drawn-out demise than his amphibious brother due to complications from his brief but hellish dip in the metaphor-making, frog-killing waters of the sadist? I mean, the second frog was at least treated to a warm bath while fading away amid the luxurious ignorance of not realizing his own peril.

     And what if his body eventually mends? What about the psychological trauma that the frog now has to fight through, the intense shock that has tainted his worldview? There are no frog-sized therapy couches, no "Frog Whisperers" to help him return to normalcy. Will he never be able to join the rest of his bayou buddies back at the pond because he now lives every moment of his life afraid of the waters around him roaring to life and finishing the job that they failed to complete before?

     This metaphor is simply too bizarre. No matter how interesting you may find the random fact that frogs lack organ-boiling cognition or how insightful you may find the message behind the tale, everything is drowned out by one inevitable thought: "Wait, what?" As a result, the only thing this metaphor teaches me is that I would rather die in warm ignorant bliss than have crippling social anxiety due to paranoia and illusory lakes of fire.