The Story
One day in summer Frog was not feeling well.
Toad said, “Frog, you are looking quite green.”
“But I always look green,” said Frog. “I am a frog.”
And Toad turned his head and said nothing, and Frog knew that he had said the wrong thing.
“I’m sorry,” Frog said.
“This is why people don’t like helping you,” Toad said.
“People don’t like helping me?” Frog asked.
“They do not,” Toad said. “That is why you are so lucky to have me.”
“I didn’t know that,” Frog said.
“You’re lucky I am here to tell you these things,” Toad said.
Frog said, “Perhaps I am very sick.”
Toad said, “Why don’t you get into my bed and rest? I don’t mind if you use it.”
And Frog thought, How lucky I am that Toad puts up with me, since no one else wants to.
Toad made Frog a cup of hot tea. Frog said, “Oh, thank you, but I don’t drink tea,” and Toad sighed a long and heavy sigh.
“Frog, this is why people don’t like helping you. Do you want people to like helping you?”
And Frog forgot that he had not asked Toad to help him, and he said “Yes, I do.”
“Then drink your tea,” Toad said. “Why do you make me regret doing nice things for you?”
Frog burnt his tongue a little but didn’t say anything. He couldn’t sleep. The room felt like it needed an apology from him.
And Frog said, “Tell me a story while I am resting?” But what he was really saying was: I’m sorry. What he was really saying was: Please like helping me.
“All right,” said Toad. “Let me think of a story to tell you.”
Toad thought and thought.”I can’t think of a story to tell you, Frog.”
“It’s not important,” Frog said.
Toad shook his head. “Obviously it is. You’ve already asked for one, and now I won’t be able to concentrate until I tell you a story, because I care about you so much. I’m not going to be able to get any of the things done I wanted to today, because of this.”
“I’m sorry,” Frog said. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Don’t lie on top of everything else,” Toad said.
“I’m sorry,” Frog said. “I’m very lucky that you put up with me.”
“I will go out on the front porch and walk up and down,” said Toad. “Perhaps that will help me to think of a story. Even though it is very cold outside, and snowing, and I have no coat. I will do this for you.”
“Please don’t,” Frog said.
“Why are you making me feel guilty for trying to do something nice for you?” Toad said.
“I don’t know how not to hurt you,” Frog cried. “I must be doing something very wrong.”
Toad walked up and down on the porch for a long time. He shivered and he stamped. Frog could hear him chattering his teeth and Frog could not sleep.
Then Toad went into the house and stood on his head.
“Why are you standing on your head?” asked Frog.
“I’m doing this for you,” Toad said. “I hope that it will help me think of a story.” But he could not think of a story to tell Frog.
Then Toad began to bang his head against the wall.
“Why are you banging your head against the wall?” asked Frog.
“I hope that if I bang my head against the wall hard enough, it will help me to think of a story,” said Toad.
“I am feeling much better now, Toad,” said Frog. Frog’s cheeks were pale and warm. “I do not think I need a story anymore. I do not need anything. I do not need anything, I promise.”
“Then you get out of bed and let me get into it,” said Toad, “because now I feel terrible. Helping you has made me sick, because I am the only one who wants to do it.”
So Frog got out of bed and Toad got in. Frog leaned against the wall for a minute, and Toad said, “Please get me a cup of tea. I got one for you. I shouldn’t have to ask.”
Frog said, “I’m sorry,” and he fixed Toad a cup of tea.
Toad said, “That’s the problem with always helping other people. No one ever wants to help you.”
Frog said, “It’s my fault.”
Toad said, “Don’t sulk. You’re so unpleasant when you sulk. Everybody says so.”
Frog said, “Would you like me to tell you a story, Toad?”
“Yes,” said Toad, “if you know one.”
“Once upon a time,” said Frog, “there were two good friends, a frog and a toad. Two…good friends.” Frog swayed a little, and then Frog puddled into a little heap on the ground.
“Frog,” Toad said from the bed, “stop being so dramatic. My tea has gotten cold.”
“I don’t think I’m very much better after all,” Frog said in a small voice.
Toad sighed. “Do I really ask you for that much, Frog? Is it really that hard for you to care for me just a little, just once, when I’ve worn myself out caring for you? If it is, tell me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Frog. “I’m sorry, Toad.”
“You’re always sorry,” Toad said. And Frog got up and hugged the wall as he went into the kitchen to get another cup of tea.
“And don’t just heat up the old tea,” Toad called out after him. “Bring me a fresh cup. My head aches from beating it against the wall for you.”
“How’s this, Toad?” Frog asked, carrying the steaming cup back into the room cupped between his two hands.
But Toad did not answer.
He had fallen asleep.
Oh my good God, Mallory, you witch queen from outer space. How do you do the perfection that you do, all the while trying slowly to KILL US?
But she does it FOR YOU. And then you say she is trying to kill you. Are you a bad friend or just ungrateful?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NOT FROG AND TOAD! This one has finally undone me.
*puddles into a little heap on the ground*
*rocks back and forth* Frog and Toad are friends. Frog and Toad are FRIENDS.
I am not okay. MALLLORRRRYYYYY
Meee toooo. I laughed at the others but then she came for my Frog and my Toad and now the bottom has dropped out of my heart.
Frog and Toad were everything, and now they are tarnished!
She will not stop until everything is ruined. Are we even safe in British children’s literature?
These do not phase me anymore. Not after Winnie the Pooh, which I can never forget (I think that one caused lasting psychological damage), or the one about the mother and the little boy and how he will always be her baby and she will always be bigger than him (to be fair, I thought that one was disturbing BEFORE the re-write).
On a side note, I have been reading to my daughter lately and I have noticed that so very many children’s books seem to take the theme that you can never escape from your mother who is apparently everywhere, always. I can’t tell if they are legit creepy, or if it is just me. But it’s really not the message I want to send my kid anyway.
Big Nut Brown Hare constantly one-upping Little Nut Brown Hare in Guess How Much I Love You horrifies me. “I will always love you more. I will always have more encompassing love for you.”
Yes yes yes! I chucked that book out.
I was reading one the other night, and it’s something someone gave us – I want to say it’s one of those Nancy Tillman books at Kohl’s that comes with the stuffed animal? Anyway, the artwork is pretty so I was kind of excited about looking at it and I wasn’t paying that much attention to what I was reading (she’s only 4 months, I just feel like we need to talk to her a lot and sometimes I run out of things to say to a 4 month old, so books let me still spew words at her little face and also get her in the habit of being read to, but anyway…) I happened to glance up and noticed that my husband was starting to look uncomfortable, and I was like, “Wait, what did I just read?” It was basically that song Every Breath You Take – the words were different, obviously, but the claustrophobic, stalker elements were all there. So I quit reading and put it in the bag for the donation bin. The one with the rabbits has always bothered me, and the one that Mallory did a version of here. (Also the rainbow fish, but for different reasons).
I remember reading that book to my younger brother when I was about seven or eight, and I think maybe because of that context, I always remember it as being a pair of siblings, where the older one is kind of a jerk, always proving he’s better than his dumb little brother in a game of one-upmanship that only he’s playing, winding the younger one up because it’s sometimes fun to drive your siblings nuts, even while telling them you love them. (Whenever we got to the last page, where he goes “. . . and back,” we’d both just go, “RUDE. Throw your brother a bone and give him ONE WIN.”)
But if the Big Nut Brown Hare was actually supposed to be a parent, then . . . Yeah. Worst ever.
I CANNOT handle the Winnie the Pooh one. It has lingered with me, hauntingly. Just…fucking nightmarish. I mean they are all AWFUL but… I don’t think it is my fondness for Winne the Pooh, although I AM fond (I liked the page on facebook so it would periodically pop up with “cute Winnie the Pooh phrases!” or somesuch and I would shiver with dread) but the vivid imagery of the physical injury was viscerally horrifying for me – and maybe the moral injury of making him do that to Eeyore paired with the extremely convincing mental confusion caused by the abuse.
I definitely felt the Winnie the Pooh one more physically than the others. Like, real life anxiety and feeling like I was suffocating. I HATED that story while also respecting the hell out of anyone who could write in a way that made me physically feel something that strongly. Even if I never want to feel that ever again.
I hate you.
How could she do this to us?
Does she visit you just to raid your kids’ bookshelves? Have you considered boxing up all their books before she arrives?
Get out of my house.
She does not deserve puppy cuddles after this.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, toads are a bunch of gaslighting dickfutons.
Dickfutons!
Truly a quote for the ages.
whyyyyyyy
whyyyyyyyyyyyy
I both want to read it again and unread it
When I was little and read the book, I did not understand why Frog and Toad were friends.
I understand it more after reading this.
I did not understand why Frog and Toad were friends, either.
I do distinctly remember a story about swimming where Frog was the more terrible of the two, but even then, it always seemed like these were two characters who should find other people to hang out with.
Oh my God, I was reading this and having flashbacks to the book I read some years ago on emotional blackmail. RUN FROG RUN.
“Let us eat one last cookie, and then we will stop.”
LALALA I will think only of the cookie story because it is none of this. You cannot have my Frog and Toad, Malheur-ey!!
“But we can climb the ladder and take the box down from the shelf and cut the string and
open the box…”
truly happier days, that cookie story.
Although the bizarro Christian exegesis on the first version I found online is equally Horrific. If you’re curious: http://www.lcr-yardley.org/content/sermons/2009/3…
It’s not that bad…I wish I could stop eating handfuls of cashews.
Yes, surely not *equally* horrific, but after just having read Mallory’s story this part felt ominous and urgent and spaced like a nightmare:
“But if what Martin Luther tells us is true, we humans don’t have any willpower.
He says that our wills have been damaged,
And because of that damage we are unable to control ourselves.
We are unable to deprive ourselves of the things that we want.
And often, what we want, has nothing to do with God.
The story was about food….now, food might not be your issue,
but that doesn’t mean you don’t have an issue.”
HAVE YOU HEARD THE COOKIE SONG THOUGH?
Because the cookie song from the Broadway show is THE BEST https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axkk850aD4o
All the songs from the Broadway show are the best (though especially the cookie song), and they have nothing to do with this evil story here. Which does not exist and never existed. MALLORY.
The cookie story is 100% me and my best friend.
Nonononononononononononononononono
I just walked from the reference desk to read the actual story that is on our shelf.
It did not help.
One bit.
Okay ’cause I was just thinking the same, how about I just stay here spreadsheeting
🙁
I may be the only one thinking this, but this is EXACTLY how I remember these stories.
Signed,
the last person in the world who dislikes The Wind in the Willows
I ALSO HATE WIND IN THE WILLOWS AND I THOUGHT EVERYONE DID UNTIL THIS VERY MOMENT
Here’s one more for: The Wind in the Willows and Frog and Toad both emotionally traumatized me as a child.
solidarity!
me too…wind in the willows gave me the creeps
Wait, wait…the Wind in the Willows: yes, of course. Only my mother likes that book. But the Frog and Toad books? Those are sacred and above reproach.
I am so sorry, but I dislike both and tend to lump them together as a result. 🙁
Wind in the Willows is a different book than Frog and Toad.
I vaguely recall that I read Wind in the Willows and the Frog and Toad books. I don’t recall hating them, necessarily, but I was surprised to see that apparently Frog and Toad were quite beloved. Maybe that’s why this one didn’t bother me that much – I have no emotional connection to these stories at all.
Verily, I was expecting to read more posts along these lines. There was something a bit charming about their artwork and their pastoral simplicity, but the Frog and Toad books stand out in memory as being uniquely, alarmingly bleak.
The episodes where Frog (or was it Toad?) wanders off because he wants to be alone, and where Toad (Frog?) dreams about being one-upped in a circus stand out in particular.
I also hate both Frog and Toad and The Wind in the Willows. My people, I have found you!
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn part was terrifying. It went from being a fun kids book about a toad losing his house to this frightening tale of meeting a pagan god where the adorable woodland creatures get memory wipes “Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before.”
What. The. Shit. Grahame.
oh, thank you for ruining a cherished childhood artifact WHILE ALSO retraumatizing me about my first relationship
thank you
thank you so much mallory
this is just plain old mean
Oh my god, Toad is my Darth Ex.
new favorite terms for worst of WORST exes. The one of which all others are pale, whiny shadow-imitations.
It’s from Captain Awkward (go to the site and google Darth Vader Boyfriend). It’s quite a brilliant metaphor!
Which would make them your Kylo Exes?
Mine too! While reading this I said out loud “I have been there, Frog, I have been there. Run!”
I love Frog and Toad- and was torn between horror and loving your genius in seeing the neurotic in it.
I wrote this about the Christmas episode:
Frog and Toad Christmas Story- A Jewish FAIL
https://rainbowtallitbaby.wordpress.com/2012/12/0…
““I am worried,” said Toad. “What if something terrible has happened?” said Toad.“What if Frog had fallen into a deep hole and cannot get out? I will never see him again!”…“What if Frog is lost in the woods?” … “What if he is cold and wet and hungry?” …“What if Frog is being chased by a big animal with many sharp teeth? What if he is being eaten up?” cried Toad. “My friend and I will never have another Christmas together!”
Sounds like some is late for the seder here. This reminds me strongly of when my husband and I were late coming to my mother-in-law’s house because we were shovelling out our car at the airport. She was sure our plane had crashed.”
My mother worries neurotically like this and she is Lutheran.
I commiserate with you then! But the 2 candles on the night before the holiday!
Toad reminded me of my mother…. Now I feel damaged.
Yep. Reminded me of my modern day relationship with my aunt (and then…maybe…a little bit of myself? UGH.)
Me too. : (
Samesies. Boo.
I have only *just* started to be conscious enough of this to stop playing Frog to my mother’s Toad.
is this what Monk 1 and Monk 2 get up to when we’re not looking
SHUT UP
NO. Monk 2 is kind and helpful. He is always truly happy when Monk 1 masters a new skill.
NO IT IS NOT
OMG I thought of the monks while reading the first part too, but then I kept reading and it just got too much WORSE.
oh
that one hurt
I am actively NOT reading this
Oh. I…I believe I used to date Toad.
Ugh right? I was like damn Mallory how’d you get this footage of me and my ex.
Did we all date Toad? He sounded familiar to me as well. Not a memory I was looking to dig up. Womp womp.
I believe I used to BE Toad. Oops.
I did not like these very much as a kid–I think I felt like there was too much imbalance in the relationship and it creeped me a bit.
For some reason, I have a really vivid memory of the one where everyone makes fun of Toad’s swimsuit.
Nothing beats “wake me up in half- past May.”
Yes, just read that one the other night with my little guy. We both felt so sad about how sad Toad was.
That’s also a song from the frog and toad musical.
This series is medical-grade Nostalgia Poison and I’m always quietly thrilled by how many emotions come tumbling out of the cobwebbed corners of my memory. And I never even liked Frog and Toad!
god help me if you ever do the berenstain bears tho
don’t encourage her
please encourage her, though I think it’s literally just c+p the text of any BB book and it’s horrifying.
IKR? I used to love those books because they reminded me of my family.
I need a moment.
The paperbacks or the easy readers? They’re both called the same series, but they are SO DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER. It’s like two continuities. In one, anthromorphic bears learn life lessons. In the other, bears wear hats, eat honey, and go out at night.
No no no no. 🙁 Please, someone give this a new ending now, so that I can sleep tonight/ever.
Frog went home feeling miserable, as he often did after evenings at Toad’s, but at least he had a good night’s sleep in his own bed. He woke, feeling refreshed, and with a sudden sense of clarity.
“My God,” he said, “Toad is a dickfuton.”
Simply saying the word aloud made his heart feel ten times lighter. He tried again.
“Dickfuton. Dickfuton! TOAD IS A GODDAMN DICKFUTON!”
Frog hopped around the room in glee, feeling more free than he had in years. His old friend Salamander, attracted by the noise, knocked on the door.
“Is everything all right in there?” Salamander said.
Frog opened the door. “Everything is fine! I’m done with that warty yellow ass once and for all!”
“Oh, thank God,” Salamander said. “We’ve been so worried about you, Frog, ever since you started hanging out with that complete dickfuton. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes,” said Frog, “but with a mental health professional. I’ve feel like I’ve got to work on me, you know?”
“Well, me and Newt and Axolotl are here if you need us, Frog. We love you and we’ll do anything we can to support you right now.”
“Thank you,” Frog said. “Would you like to come in and have a cookie?”
Ok this is good, but now could you change it more, so that Frog and Toad are friends still and this aberration by Mallory never existed
But I like Salamander so he/she can stay
Frog woke, feeling refreshed, and with a sudden sense of clarity.
“My God,” he said, “what a strange dream I had. I dreamed that Toad was a gaslighting dickfuton.”
He ran over to visit his friend Salamander and tell him all about the strange dream.
“What a strange dream,” Salamander said. “Certainly Toad can be a difficult friend, but he’s not a gaslighting dickfuton.”
“Phew,” Frog said. “I sure I am glad I have more than just one friend.”
“Yes, the additional perspective a friend brings is always helpful,” Salamander said. “Still, it’s a good reminder for all of us to keep an eye out for toxic behavior patterns in our personal relationships.”
“Good point,” Frog said. “I’ll speak candidly with Toad about the ways in which his behaviors hurt me sometimes. It might be a difficult conversation, but it’ll make our friendship stronger in the long run.”
“Well said,” Salamander replied. “Care for a cookie?”
:claps: Well done!!!
Both of these endings are amazing. I am delighted.
Thank you sincerely for working “dickfuton” into both versions.
It felt important.
Thus ends Frog’s fever dream.
He woke, vowing never again to skip flossing. And from that day forward, in addition to flossing, he remembered always to wash his hands after using public transit.
Outstanding! I liked the lesson at the end. It can be all too easy to forget.
It’s a bit of a Berenstain Bears ending, though. I always hated those preachy books. (Sorry, person up there whom I have never met!)
Your version is much better. It stars Frog and Toad instead.
And I DO hope you meant that the Berenstain Bears are the preachy ones and not Frog and Toad!!! (I haven’t read Berenstain Bears because as I child I hated their weird and unbearlike faces)
Oh yes, indeedy, in my mind Frog and Toad live in a preach-free universe of whimsy, carved with inventive illustration into a magical memory island where my sister and nephew will never grow old. Because my sister LOVES the cookie story and when I lived nearer it figured prominently in our family store of delightful references.
Now I am missing my family like whoa and Chicago suddenly feels so different from Vermont. This story made me want to cry after all.
My sister just gave my 3 year old niece her first Frog & Toad (beat me). Not very many good memories from childhood, but the ones I do have frequently involve books.
Memories being murdered one by one by Children’s Stories Made Horrific.
Well that hit a little close to home.
Yeah, I need to sit down for a while and look at pictures of kittens until I can breathe properly again.
I… wish I didn’t know so many people (men; I mean men) like this. :/
As soon as I saw this headline I wanted to just walk away. But morbid curiosity dragged me here and now I wish it had left me alone. I am wiping this from my memory and going back to singing my Frog and Toad songs and you can’t stop me.
Also, if anyone else wants to revel in delightful Frog and Toad ness look up the Broadway musical soundtrack and it’s like listening to the stories and they are so catchy and no one ever knows what I am talking about, and this is the perfect place to share my love for it.
I *thought* this was going to be the perfect antidote to this horrible story. And the first video I watch has the not-Balki guy from TGIF’s Perfect Strangers as Toad and now my childhood memories are so mixed up that I’m not sure who I am any more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bo31Ru5aqI
I never liked the Frog and Toad books, but “Merry Almost Christmas” is in heavy rotation in my year-round playlists!
eating cookies eating cookies we’re so happy eating cookies
cookies cookies cookies we adore
haHA I never read this story in the first place so YOU CANNOT HURT ME MALLORY. YOU CANNOT HURT ME ANYMORE.
until the next one.
god help us all.
NOT READING NOT READING LOOKING FORWARD TO READING THESE WITH MY DAUGHTER IN ABOUT THREE YEARS’ TIME.
The room felt like it needed an apology from him.
OUCHOUCHOUCHOUCHOUCH
JESUS CHRIST MALLORY
There it is.
How do you do this so well Mallory?
I feel like crying. Toad is like Lila from the Ferrante novels I have been immersed in this past month.
DON’T DO IT, FROG, DON’T KEEP DATING THAT TOAD FOR THREE MORE YEARS BEFORE HE DUMPS YOU FOR THE NEW GIRL AT HIS WORK AND THEN TELLS YOU YOU’RE CRUEL FOR NOT TAKING HIM BACK WHEN THAT DOESN’T PAN OUT AND THEN ASKS OUT YOUR BEST FRIEND A MONTH LATER
… I will never be able to see my Big Bad Ex as anything but a faintly anthropomorphic toad again. Holy damn.
The best thing about this is he stopped writing the frog & toad stories because they were getting unhealthy/unbalanced/mean.
toads don’t have teeth tho
I focus on this so I don’t have to remember the actual story I just read.
Some … some toads do have teeth.
i’m sorry.
This is seriously fucking chilling.
“Please run away from people, groups, organisations and ideas who tell you that you are terrible and that they love you and that the proof of their goodness is the ability to love something as terrible as you.”
—tumblr user queenshulamit
My Darth Ex would tell me she’d consulted her friends and they allllll agreed that my need for space was odd and that she was trying So Hard to deal with my unreasonable demands and why didn’t I appreciate her effort more?
So pleased that’s over.
I’m just going to pretend this article is a hallucination caused by the fever I’m currently battling. Just a fever dream, lalala
I read the lost button Frog & Toad to the kids this very night. But the “tell me a story one” has always been so unsettling that I changed the part about Toad banging his head against the wall, because, yeah.
Does anyone here remember reading Animal Bedtime Stories, speaking of beloved childhood books?
This is not going to end
this has only just begun
she’s coming for you, Mike Mulligan
she’s coming for you, Great Gray Bridge
she will not Make Way for Ducklings
brew the tear-water tea tonight, Owl
Horton, who do you hear tonight?
hear her howling round your kitchen door
better not let her in
there’s a monster at the end of this book
there’s a monster at the end of this book
there’s a monster
at the end
of this
book
That moment when a parody describes your relationship with your mother better than anything else ever has.
Sometimes I feel bad about running away when I used to live with my mum. Then I read something like this and don’t feel so bad any more.
I haven’t read most of the original books but I love how the parallels to horrific things in real life are always there without being heavy-handed in these things. Also love the use of puddled as a verb.
Mallory.
Did you look into my life and use my ex as inspiration?
Oh.
Oh, wow. Technically the first thing I ever wrote fanfiction for (I was a precocious and queer child), and… you’ve made it look like the marriage i’m fleeing. Gods above and below.
MALLORY MAY YOU LOSE YOUR MIND AND EYES IN THE GODDESS’ TEMPLE
Nope, not reading this either. Mallory, your evil is overflowing.
Oh my goodness. At first I was horrified, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is essentially how the books actually go. They’re kind of unhealthy friends.
On a separate note, you should really look at The Poky Little Puppy. There’s a book ripe for making more horrible.
Well, this stabbed right through my gut and the feelings of anxiety dwelling there. Awesome writing as always.
Mallory, I didn’t know you were this evil
I never read Frog and Toad are Friends and now I know why.