My grandmother sent us to catch a frog when I was about 13. Down to the riverbank we went, me and my cousins, tingling with the unease endemic to being assigned a task you don’t quite understand. In those days we used to catch frogs for the sport of it, and cruelly inflate them and turn them into balloons, but the activity earned us rebuke from our elders. Why my grandma — who always warned us against the practice and often enforced the prohibition with a stick — suddenly insisted upon the forbidden activity was unclear.
Her son, my uncle, was 35 and still unmarried. This, apparently, required intervention from higher powers at the expense of a common frog. We were conscripted to provide the goods for a ritual. The frog was placed beneath my uncle’s pillow without his knowledge and we waited to see if he would dream of his future bride.