Fergus Plays Basketball
Well, there’s no getting away from this story. Fergus’s favourite summer game was flying. He’d fly everywhere he could and he’d do it as often as I’d let him.
Now, you say that frogs can’t fly.
Well, you’re right of course, they can’t fly but they can sure hitchhike on things that did fly.
Fergus’s favourite game was to grab onto a ball very tightly with his fingers and toes and then ask me to throw it up into the air. He’d want me to do this for hours and hours, he liked it so much. It must have been like riding a roller coaster to go up and down so quickly.
One time, I was shooting hoops and he asked me if he could take a few turns riding the ball.
“No problem.” I said and so Fergus jumped on top of the ball and hung on for dear life.
I tossed the ball through the net a few times, catching it before it hit the ground and Fergus was whooping and hollering and giving us both a play by play announcement of how I was single-handedly winning the basketball championships.
Then, I made a small mistake.
I threw the ball into the hoop as normal but instead of catching it, I let it hit the ground and bounce. Fergus thought that was pretty funny and he whooped all the harder as the ball bounced down the driveway away from my outstretched hands.
Let me explain something. If you put something heavy on top of a ball and throw the ball into the air, sooner or later the heavy thing is going to go to the bottom of the ball (teachers call this gravity). Try this yourself if you don’t believe me. Tape something heavy to a ball and bounce the ball. Pretty soon the heavy thing will go to the bottom of the ball and mess up the bouncing.
Well, in this case, the something heavy was Fergus.
And as the ball bounced down the driveway, Fergus got closer and closer to the bottom of the ball. And then, after about 5 bounces he was at the bottom of the ball.
Splat! The basketball landed right on top of Fergus.
Splat! It bounced on top of him again because he hadn’t let go.
Splat! It bounced on him again because he was yelling so hard he forgot to let go.
Splat! The ball bounced for the last time because frogs don’t bounce as well as basketballs.
I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t chase the ball any more.
Fergus was not very happy with me for missing the ball and he was a terribly sore and bruised frog. He asked me how I’d like to be bounced down the driveway?
I wouldn’t but then again, I’m not a silly frog who won’t let go when he’s about to be splatted by a basketball.
Fergus told me he wasn’t going to play basketball with me ever again but he thought he might play baseball. Which leads me to the story of how he got splatted riding a baseball but I can’t tell that one – it is too long for right now.
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