BECHiEVE iT!

So...Sam has been learning to write a proper paragraph this year and there has been a lot of emphasis on crafting a good topic sentence.  I try to help him, but I realized that my topic sentence of choice is:

So,...

So, one of the highlights of kindergarten in Mrs. Dey's class is that a student gets to bring home the class pet, Frank the Frog on a random weekend during the school year.  He comes with a backpack that contains a journal where the kids can record what they did with Frank and a book, called A Frog Thing.

While Frank was with us, he got to meet other "pets" and swing on the hammock,

play with Legos (I couldn't convince them to fold the laundry),

do cross-eyes,

go to church,

and go to a Birthday party!

During the weekend, he also got to go to the driving range but since he was in the custody of my husband, there were no photos taken of this certainly noteworthy activity.

So, there was a book that came in the backpack along with Frank, and a few pages in, I got a little irritated:

Now, I happen to have a pet peeve about the over-used saying, "You can do anything you set your mind to."

(I also have a pet peeve about the rampant usage of a dot on a capital I in this country.  If you haven't noticed it before, you will now.  A dot is for a lower case i, people!!!) 

Well, this sign has more going on than just the dotted capital i, sadly.

Anyway, back to Frank and the book and my first pet peeve.  I just have a problem with telling people that they can do anything they set their mind to, or even worse, if they believe it, they can achieve it.  I can't be an Olympic athlete, no matter how hard I try or "put my mind to it" (whatever that means).  Barring some kind of Divine Intervention, I will not learn to tap dance well or live long enough to master Japanese and Russian.  It's just a fact, folks (on a side note, I am a fan of "Where there's a will, there's a way" for some reason).  But I have seen the odious phrase on school signs across the southwest (well, one in AZ and one in CA) and it seems to be on the end of every sappy reality competition tv show.  Jeremy and I have taken to calling the message, "BECHiEVE iT!" (with dotted capital i's thrown in for fun).

Surprisingly, as I continued to read A Frog Thing, I realized that it was going in a direction I liked.  Frank was a frog but he wanted to fly.  His parents told him he could do anything he set his mind to but when he told them it was to fly, they responded by lovingly reminding him that he was a frog and that they had meant he could do any frog thing he wanted to.  Like becoming a good swimmer.  So he swam and sadly watched the birds fly overhead.  One day, he had the opportunity to rescue a little bird who had fallen into the water.  In gratitude, the parent birds offered him their assistance with anything he would like.  When they found out he wanted to fly, they put a stick between them and he hung on and "flew" around about the entire froggy community.  Ok, at this point, you are thinking what I was thinking, "It wasn't really Frank who was flying."  But get this, he comes back and ADMITS that the birds were flying and even though he loved it, he realized that he was a frog and he would never be able to actually fly.  He decides to be content with swimming well and the last picture is one of him happily (if not a bit wistfully) gliding through the water with birds flying far in the distance above him.  Hurray!  An accurate story (well, I mean, the animals talked, but whatever).  I loved it.

By the way, you will be happy to know that while Frank was with us, he did get to fly!

And then he got stuck in a tree.

Sorry, Frank, you are just a stuffed frog, you know.