The act of violating sacred things, or of treating them with contempt or irreverence; irreverent or too familiar treatment or use of what is sacred; desecration; as, the profanation of the Sabbath; the profanation of a sanctuary; the profanation of the name of God.
The first time I ever said the f-word was in the 2nd grade. I don’t know where I had heard the expression, but I probably learned it from school. My parents cursed like Tom Sawyer but I never heard them use the f-word until adulthood, and even then I found it kind of shocking to hear either parent say it.
The incident involved a frog. We lived in a house at the end of a canal, and among other marvels of sea-creaturedom I saw countless frogs, some of them blooming out of tadpoles and others seemingly born fully-formed.
Leopard frogs were a favorite of mine. I still get a little pique of excitement when I think of how brightly colored they were, and how fast and far the Leopards could jump. Other frogs waddled around in a comparatively slovenly manner but to me the Leopard was sleek and smart.
Enter, then, what remains the biggest frog I have ever seen. As big as a basketball this monster sat like a water-filled balloon outside the garage, on dirt behind a bush, not moving and not even seeming to think. Its broad, frowning mouth reached from one end of its body to the other and its motionless eyes stared, seeming to follow me even as they seemed not to move. Its too-fall feet seemed like irrelevant nubs, like insults. How could they lift something so disproportionately huge?
This was not a fun frog. I could not play with it or watch it jump around. I waited for it to return my stares in a sentient-seeming way. I tried to imagine playing with this unwieldy beast, and visions of trying to roll this blubberful blob around in the grass or on the driveway didn’t make me laugh, they made me sour. In my squeaky little voice I muttered “Oh fuck you” to this mass, summoning all the disdain a 2nd-grader could muster.
I stepped away from the playless, warty globule, feeling defeated, feeling I had been schooled with a blunt, ugly lesson, feeling like I must have owed this frog something for it to have made such a crassly torpid appearance in my little life.
