The Adventures of Faust
Part I
By Alyssa Polacsek
To Max on his birthday, 2004,
without whom
this story would never have been told.
Once upon a time in a land not so far away, down by the pond filled with thousands of lily pads and more flies than one frog could ever consume without running the risk of turning into a piggy, there lived a frog who stood out amongst the backwash of green and springtime forest. His name was Faust. Faust was not a typical frog even by his looks alone. Faust was blazing orange and neon yellow with spindly legs that could keep him hopping hour-upon-hour extending farther and longer than the other frogs ever dreamed possible. Faust was what his mother oftentimes referred to as being “a hyperactive child.”
If he wasn’t playing leap frog or racing the others around the pond, Faust, in all of his glory with boundless energy could be found entertaining his friends with tales of kings and sorcerer’s, acting out all of the players as well as narrator. Faust would rally his listener’s to play their part with “gasps” and “awes” and “cheers” and “jeers” as needed, and they did so with joy. He would spin his tales until his last listener was beckoned home for dinner and he was left to amuse himself with an extraordinary ending after which he would hop home to see what his own mother had cooked for dinner.
Every once in awhile however, Faust’s mother would come tugging on his ear after calling his name repeatedly, ringing the dinner bell unnoticed by this boy’s “selective hearing.” On those occasions Faust would cry out in character “Let me go free!” and “This behavior is unjustified and will not go unpunished by the gods.” The crowd was spooked into believing Faust’s mother was the Evil Queen of Doom delivering him a horrible fate. Sometimes his mother played along and scared the crowd into believing she was wicked. And when she did not play along, they believed her to be wicked anyway, for Faust could be heard crying out in the distance as his mother huffed in her struggle to get him home.
Faust’s mother was not really wicked. For any mother that would play along in her son’s games surely cannot be all that bad. Faust knew this to be true and he loved his mother more than anything else in this world. She was his best friend and she worked hard to feed him, clothe him, bathe him, and tend to his skinned knees and chaffed scales when he had played too hard. Each night she tucked Faust in bed and spun a tale more magnificent than Faust had ever told.
Faust closed his eyes and began to drift to the lilt in his mother’s voice …at times a soothing, cunning whisper welcoming the journey and dream.
Faust found himself in a canoe struggling to paddle against the current in an urgent attempt to deliver a message to the Green Cat of Bangladesh. This is a task more difficult in nature due to the constant change in direction, flowing sideways, upstream, downstream, and at times revolving in the same way as a Ferris wheel.
Copyright © 2009 Alyssa Polacsek, Lakota Films, LLC & Natural Child Blog
