Another Verse for Kermit's Song

Sometimes I like to visit nonprofit writing sites, like poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com. This weekend's writing challenge there was to write a poem or short prose piece from the point of view of a TV character. Here is a longish rant with a poem at the end of it. 

I thought that I don't watch enough TV to think of a character, and then the first poem linked at https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/2022/08/friday-writings-41-tv-time.html was about a character who's one of the major cliches of the 1980s, the Prisoner of Shyness. This person is always an extrovert at heart, and the reason why she or he is not totally caught up in one of those close-knit teen cliques where the goal is for everyone to look and sound like multiple-birth siblings is only, ever, allowed to be that the person has been SO TERRIBLY HUUUURRRRT that the person is HIDING from the LOVE of other people, TRAPPED in FEAR, etc. etc. A lot of drama was projected onto this stereotype. Child abuse, preferably of a sexual variety, was the most common explanation provided for their nightmare of social isolation. 

I felt isolated in most crowds, and went through a phase of what I thought had to be the most painful shyness anyone had ever survived, all the usual teen angst. I empathized with the poor little isolated extroverts in fiction, and even tried writing a novel about one, but I identified with the happier characters in biographies and happy-family stories as well as stories about artists and rebels. I really latched on to C.S. Lewis's description of characters who "were willing to be friendly with anyone who was friendly, and didn't give a hang about anyone who wasn't." Whatever people thought, and when I went to a church college they expressed that kind of thought almost constantly, I was not a lonely extrovert longing to be "included" in the little prep-school cliques. I wanted to do things that might include other people, most of whom were also introverts, but usually involved spending time alone. My brother and I were the closest friends we had, but I was not as athletic as he was and he was not as musical as I was, so even then there were spaces in our togetherness.

I grew up to learn that this difference was indeed permanent, probably hereditary. That when adults tell teenagers to "befriend" the poor pitiful kids who seem isolated, like Max, they really need to balance that thought with some acknowledgment of the kids who are somewhat isolated--due to having lives and talents and in some cases even jobs. The nonconforming, non-clique people in high school might be the most interesting people to know, but they are not yearning to be dragged down into watching television together and wearing identical clothes with some clique or other. And spending evenings and weekends doing things you want to do on your own feels very different from being trapped in the basement of a collapsing building with a monster, And another difference: I met a lot of other people who were isolated by having talents and vocations. I don't believe I ever actually knew a person who was isolated by fear or trauma.

I thought about this while the thought of television characters was still in my mind. What popped into my head was Kermit the Frog, singing new verses to his well known song, "It's Not Easy Being Green."

When I was just a little tadpole,

Swimming around and looking sort of like a fish,

Some fishes wanted me to join their school

And swim around and try to avoid sharks. 

And, tadpoles having nothng else to do,

I swam around and tried to look more like a fish,

But I never grew fins...or scales...or tentacles...or anything like that.

Instead I started growing legs,

And my tail disappeared; it turned into legs

And I looked less like a fish every day.

And finally I just had to climb up on the land,

And see my reflection in a quiet pool,

And know that I was going to be a frog and there wasn't any going back.

But frogs can have a good time with other frogs,

And, at least on the Muppet Show, they can even marry pigs

If that is what they really want to do, and it was. 

And frogs can have adventures on the land

Where all fish could do would be to flop around and die.

And I am a frog, for better or for worse

And I think that's what I want to be.