I think the real beauty of carnival games might actually be their crookedness and impossibility. It sort of equalizes us. It’s equally unfair. Everyone is at the same disadvantage. These games don’t care how strong or skilled you are. You may be an MVP on the basketball court, but I guarantee you aren’t sinking a single shot at a carny’s “Hoops” booth. You can be a pitcher for the Blue Jays, but I promise you aren’t knocking all three milk bottles off the table. If you don’t believe me, just go to a carnival sometime and watch all the jacked-up dudes in muscle shirts giving themselves aneurysms trying (and failing) to ring a bell by swinging a cartoon-sized hammer down on a button.
These games are so clearly impossible, the carnival-folk who run them don’t even try to hide the fact that they know you’re going to lose. You could be right in the middle of the wind-up for your final throw or swing or what-have-you, and before you even shoot your shot, they’ll say some shit like, “Ohhhh, thought you had that one! Five dollars gets you another try. Win something for your kids.”
Come on, man! Don’t do me like that! I hadn’t even lost yet!!!
No. It doesn’t matter how strong or skilled or smart we are; when we lay our money down on a carnival game counter, we are all transformed into suckers, suckers at the mercy of a carny, suckers paying money to lose a game it would take a legitimate miracle to win.
Well, this is a story about a miracle.
You may not know “Frog Bog” by name, but I bet you’d know it if you saw it. It’s a pretty common game to see at carnivals and exhibitions. There’s a little pool of water in the middle of the booth with lily pad shaped cups that rotate within it. Around the pool, there are large frog statues grinning at you. The object of the game is to launch a small rubber frog from the mechanical catapult in front of you by hitting the launcher with a mallet. If the body of the rubber frog lands inside the lily pad cup, you win a prize. Sounds pretty simple, right?
Well, like any good carnival game, Frog Bog is just designed to look possible while actually being a strategic nightmare. The mallets are tethered to the catapults on a criminally short cords, making it difficult to get any kind of swing, and even if you manage to launch the frog on a halfway-decent trajectory, the chances of missing the large frog statues that rim the pool and actually landing in one of the moving lily pads is next to zero.
I’ve been paying to lose at Frog Bog for approximately 35 years. I have never come close to winning, and I’ve never found a way to get even remotely better at the game. This past week, however, I took my children to an amusement park in PEI and introduced them to the game. My daughter, being smarter than most, recognized right away that the mallet’s short tether made it unfair, but my son, much like me at his age, was entranced by the whirling lily pads and the weird grinning frog statues with their little sailor hats and striped shirts. He tried over and over to land a frog, but it just wasn’t happening, a pain I know all too well. My daughter didn’t seem to care so much, but I saw the frustration and heartbreak on my son’s face, and I looked up at that frog statue with his smirk and heartless black eyes and I was filled with a righteous anger.
“No,” I thought, “No more. Your reign of terror ends today, you smug green bastard!”
Using my son’s last turn, I took hold of the mallet and rested it gently on the catapult launcher. I let my mind go blank: no thoughts, no strategies, no pride, nothing. I didn’t try to aim or time my shot at all. I didn’t need to. I wouldn’t miss and I knew it…so did that frog.
Overhead, the clouds drifted.
A light breeze passed.
The frog stared at me.
I stared at the frog.
I waited…I waited until I finally saw it…a shimmer of fear that passed over the frog’s eyes.
It was time.
*WHAM*
There was no swing. The mallet had already been resting on the launcher.
I was a conduit and I let divine power move up into my body through my feet, into my legs, up into my torso, and down through my arm.
It was like Bruce Lee’s famous one-inch-punch applied to a small rubber frog catapult.
I struck like a goddamned cobra and it echoed like a thunderclap.
The little rubber frog shot up and towards the pool, passing over the horrified face of the frog statue, and down it came, directly into a lily pad cup.
“You did it!” shouted my son!
“You got it!” shouted my daughter
“You won!” shouted the young carny.
“NOOOOOOO!” screamed the frog.
“I won,” I said, echoing the young carny, but directing my words at the frog statue I continued to hold in my gaze.
The carny was in shock, but he pulled down a little stuffed prize and gave it to my son. My own prize was knowing what I had done, what I had become.
As we turned to leave, one of the other carnies scurried over from the bean bag toss game.
“Did that guy just win?!” I heard him ask.
“Yeah! It was kind of cool actually! I’ve only seen like 2 other people win this.”
“I’ve never seen anyone win this game. How’d he do it. Where’d he stand?”
I left these two amazed young men to marvel at what they’d seen, to stand where I had stood, to hear the tale, and spread the word about what they’d witnessed here today: the defeat of an amphibious tyrant and the birth of a Frog Bog God.
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