"Where is it going to live?"

 

I asked my partner our oft-repeated question while we were out shopping. We'd made an agreement when we first moved in together and realized we had entirely too much stuff; if we were going to bring anything new into the house, we had to be able to answer the question of where it was going to live.

 

We weren't even shopping, really. We were just out and had decided to stop in at the local thrift store to see if they had anything interesting. They didn't, really, but my partner had somehow never seen those little wooden frogs with the ridges on their backs that made a croaking sound when you ran the little wooden stick that came with it down them that were all the rage about twenty years ago. And, like everything else that was all the rage about twenty years ago, there were at least a dozen of them in the thrift store at any given time. And my partner was completely enamoured with them. So, once he announced he wanted to buy one, I asked the all-important question: where is it going to live?

 

After some back and forth, we figured out a place for it. It didn't hurt his case that his boyish glee at the sound it made was completely adorable. So he bought it.

 

~~~

 

It kind of happened incidentally.

 

For days after he bought this croaking wooden frog, he played with it incessantly. Even while I was talking. When I'd be in the middle of saying something, and I'd hear the crooooak, I would stop talking and simply look at him sternly until he indicated I could continue. I figured that eventually, it would sink in that I didn't like being interrupted by the damn croaking, and he'd be more mindful of when he played with it.

 

That's not exactly what happened.

 

~~~

 

One day, about 3 or 4 days after he'd bought the frog, we were playing with some triggers, and he got the bright idea to make the croaking a trigger for something. I agreed, since hey, if he was going to be playing with the thing constantly, I might as well get some fun out of it. He told me that he wasn't going to let me remember what the trigger did, and that I would find out when it happened. So, we did our thing, he brought me back up, and he croaked the frog, looking at me expectantly.

 

Nothing happened.

 

I stared at him.

 

"Nothing?" he asked, eyes gleaming.

 

"No? Nothing happened..."

 

He tried a few more times, inviting my feedback each time. Each time, nothing happened.

 

"Ah, well. I guess that one didn't stick, then. That happens sometimes, no harm, no foul." He shrugged it off.

 

~~~

 

Later that evening, my partner was, once again, playing with the frog. Croak. Croak. Croooooooak. Finally, I'd had enough.

 

"Will you just put that away for five minutes, please?" I asked.

 

Or, I tried to ask. As soon as I tried to talk, my throat tightened and I couldn't get the words out.

 

"Cat got your tongue?" My partner was positively giddy.

 

"A-" I tried responding. Once again, the words just wouldn't form in my mouth.

 

"Frog in your throat?" It was taking everything he had to not dissolve into giggles.

 

Ah, I thought. That's what that did. It just seemed like it did nothing because I wasn't trying to talk then.

 

I rolled my eyes, looking at him expectantly.

 

"Go ahead," he motioned to me with his hand that he was giving me the floor, so to speak.

 

"You asshole!" I said, giggling right along with him.

 

"Come on, 'frog in your throat,' that's clever!!! And you were already stopping to talk every time I chimed him anyway... all I did was reinforce it a little!"

 

"You're a fucking pun monster, but I'm not going to turn down a gag trigger."

 

Mr. Frog Gag has been a treasured member of our household ever since.