Road to Rwanda----"The Day When I Lost My Frogs"

 

The assignment for my Ph.D. students at Peking University was to write a narrative/descriptive essay about an impactful experience from their childhood.  I have no idea where this student got these ideas, but I thought you might be as entertained by his essay as I was.

 

The Day When I Lost My Frogs

A giant vat was in the yard when I was about 8 years old. One day, my brother
advised, “Let's catch some frogs and fill them into the vat for pets.” Catching frogs was
not been forbidden by China. It was my first time doing this kind of thing even though it’s
normal in the countryside. We were so excited about this advice and started moving.

The primary step was to prepare the tools. We imitated the process of the
television show we had seen before. We burned a needle with the candle and twisted it
into a semicircle as a hook. And we broke off a stripe of wicker from the tree for the rod.
Finally, we tied the hook to the rod with a segment of cotton string. We dug some
earthworms from the garden and put them in a bottle which will be used to hold frogs
too. The preparation process was done, and we went out with the rob.

We reached a rice field near our home and started fishing. We put the hook with
an earthworm on the field and waited for some stupid frogs to eat it. There was nothing
happened for a few moments. We wondered if there were no frogs in this field, so we
walked around to search for a frog. However, a frog ignored the bait even when we put
the hook on its head. At that time, we remembered that frogs would only see moving
things. Thus, we swung the hook in the air. A frog jumped out from the water and bit the
hook! Having Found out the secrete, we catch up with many frogs quickly. We picked up
the frogs from the hook and put them into the bottle. Sooner, the bottle was full of frogs,
and I was sent to go home and pull the frogs into the vat.

I put all the frogs into the vat filled with half’s rainwater and looked at them. The
frogs struggled to jump out of the vat while it was too deep for them to exit. I stared at
the frogs for a while and wondered if they got hurt from being pricked by the hook and were they tried to keep jumping. There was an idea came into my mind. I picked some
sticks and put them into the water and wished the frogs to have a break on the sticks.
The frogs stand on the sticks and stopped moving as I excepted! I returned to the field
to look for my brother and missed witnessing the process of the frogs jumping out with
the help of sticks.

Because of my mistake, we hadn’t got any frogs for pets. However, I was not
getting complaints from my brother. He said he felt sorriness for the frogs too. Thus, he
hadn’t caught additional frogs when I left. That day may be a crossroads for me.
Fortunately, I keep my goodness. Until now, I still couldn’t figure out whether I was too
stupid to lose the frogs or if I proposed to let them go. But I believe I got another kind of
“frog” that day