Okay. The time has come to discuss one of the truly horrible aspects of my past. And you know I'm repentant since I'm coming right out and posting this under my very own Mudcat Name.

Look, you're being warned right now that this isn't a nice subject. It's not pretty or fit for Penelope Rutledge's parlour or even for discussion at the bar in the Mudcat Tavern. It's a dark subject, very dark, but it's time that the veil was stripped away from this subject.

You men who were "in" know what I'm talking about. If you haven't got it yet, it's frogging.

Yeah. You remember. You're out with the Boy Scouts, wearing your shorts and merit badges, doing the Camporee thing maybe, working on your Woodcraft merit badge. Along comes some officious Patrol Leader who tells you do pick up your wood chips or something equally stupid, maybe something that will get you dirty or even delay dinner.

Or maybe the kid who's been assigned to cook for your Patrol served beans 'n' franks for dinner as well as for breakfast and lunch. Or worse, serves only the beans. It's a breach of the unwritten Boy Scout Law ("A Scout is nontoxic") and your life will be at great risk in the tent that night.

So you frogged 'em.

They got into bed that night, crawling into their sleeping bag or bed roll, secure in the knowledge that they "had done their daily best." Their feet felt the slime, the cold, the movement and then came the explosion. The tent going straight up, the scream, the torn sleeping bag or bed roll, the kid running around yelling "Oh God oh god it's awful the slime oh god!" And the final, choking sobs. The gentle "ribit" as the puzzled frogs hopped away, back to eating flies at the creek or lake.

And your satisfied sigh as you stifled your giggles and dropped off to sleep.

Frogging. All of you veterans know about it, you've all done it or heard about it. Sure, maybe you used a garter snake or pulled up the offender's tent stakes.

I did it. I did it all. I'm not proud of it. But I'm still alive, mostly.