The Golden Ball

Art found a private balcony. He smoked in great deep full breaths and stared into the night toward the Memorial Coliseum.

“Can I have a hit of that?”

It was Teresa.
“Sure.”
“I don’t smoke cigarettes,” Teresa said.
“Neither do I.”

The one-minute bell rang. Everyone headed for the door.
The chairs were gone and everyone sat on the carpeted floor facing MA, who sat on the edge of the stage.

MA told the fairy tale of the Golden Ball and then a strange story.

“We have studied some material from Doctor Gregory Bates, a biologist, on the habits of frogs. The Doctor built a frog pond and invited many frogs to live on his lily pads amongst reeds and grasses. The frogs liked the artificial pond and did fine. Dr Bates wondered what would happen if when winter came he heated the water. He was in Illinois. So he applied a heating coil and warmed the water to keep it from freezing. Usually frogs hibernate, but by heating the water, the frogs flourished doing froggy things all winter. One day the doctor went to work at his lab and left the heating coil on. The water got warmer and warmer ‘til it almost boiled. What do you think happened?”
“The frogs jumped out.”
“Everyone agree? Anyone think any different?” MA said.
“No.”
“Well, when the Doctor came home, the frogs were still in the pond. None of the frogs jumped out. Because he feared killing his frogs, Doctor Bates wanted the frogs out in a hurry, so he grabbed a two by four and whacked the pond. All the frogs leapt out to safety.

“Go home now and have lucid dreams. See you back at eight am and we’ll continue our study of frogs,” MA said.