A Clandestine Passenger

In recent days,  I have been folding repeatedly and with delightful satisfaction, this origami frog designed by Román Díaz.

Today, as I was folding this model, I remembered a day long ago when I was a mere six or seven years old,  wandering at break-time through the hallways of my elementary school.

Suddenly, two girls –older and intimidating at the advanced ages of perhaps eleven,  approached me. One of them stretched out her arm and removed something from the top of my head.  She carefully opened her hand, and there in her palm sat a tiny, wet, green, and very much alive, frog. “Look what you had on your head!” she said.

I stared in innocent amazement at this clandestine passenger, and could not imagine how, or where, or when,  she might have hopped  aboard.

The girls walked away with my frog, and looking after them I was sad that I couldn’t keep this new-found friend. But even so I never had a doubt, until just a few years ago, that on that day these self-appointed monitors of public order  had discovered a stowaway, traveling blissfully with me through the hallways of my elementary school.

Origami frog, created by Román Díaz

Diagrams: Origami Kit For Dummies by Nick Robinson