FROGGY THOUGHTS

Not last night, but the night before, my husband and I went to see a movie.  We made a proper evening of it and went to dinner together beforehand – not a fancy sort of dinner, but a comfortable sort of dinner that can only be had with someone you are very fond of.  We sat across from one another in a booth and took our time over our fast-food meal.  They call it fast food because it is meant to be convenient for people who are in a hurry, but I think we enjoyed it so much because we weren’t.

The movie was entertaining, which is the point of movies.  We even sat through the credits, which were set to colorful images from the movie, probably to entice people to stay instead of walking out as soon as the director’s name appeared on the screen.  For a while I watched the animation.  Then I started reading the names.

Kermit the frog once said something that I found very insightful.  It seems especially insightful given that he is not only a frog but a puppet, and it’s somewhat rare to find wisdom in the mouth of anyone with this particular combination of traits.  One of his fellow Muppets, during the starting credits of one of their movies, remarked at how many names kept appearing on the screen.  I was inclined to agree, but Kermit responded in his peculiar, froggy voice, “Well, they all have families.”

I watched the hundreds of names go by while the music played and the animated characters danced around in the background.  There is someone out there for every one, someone watching to find their father, sister or son in the forest of names.  The credits represent the hundreds of people whose livelihood is to create entertainment that the rest of America will be willing to sit through.  But they won’t sit through the credits.

Remember Kermit’s wisdom.  There will always be names: names at the ends of movies, names in the newspapers, names attached to laws that you don’t think ought to have been passed.  Some you’ll be inclined to drag through the mud, and others you’ll pass over on the way to bigger and better things.  Give them the benefit of their humanity.  Say to yourself, and say it in a froggy voice if you need to, “Well, they all have families.”