I was reading a post from the redoubtable Mr. Wapojif the other day on the subject of curious frog drawings, and I was reminded of one of the many things I'd doodle as a teenager — including, yes, in the Rough Book. I present to you in the accompanying image: a character who never really got a name, he was just known as "Grumpy Frog".
Grumpy Frog, as you may be able to tell from his colour scheme, began life as an attempt to draw Yoshi from Super Mario World. As I recall, it was one of those situations where I started doodling Yoshi, realised that things were going badly as my friends were watching, and thus quickly repurposed him into something else, as I intended to do all along. I don't think I fooled them, but Grumpy Frog became something of a fixture in places where I'd doodle things anyway.
I don't really know anything about Grumpy Frog other than the fact he is perpetually annoyed about something. I never incorporated him into a comic strip or drew him doing anything other than the pose you see above, largely because, as you can probably tell from the drawing, I can't really draw frogs either. But he is still one of those oddly specific fond memories I have from Back In The Day that, for some reason, will never leave me.
I sometimes find myself wondering if the amount of useless garbage I still carry around in my head from my school days is normal. There have been multiple occasions where I've made a reference to something from 30+ years ago to a friend I haven't seen for a while and I get a response somewhere along the lines of "I can't believe you remember that". But, to be fair, people always seem to be pleased to be reminded of these things for the most part — I do at least have enough social awareness not to bring up memories that are likely painful or awkward for the people in question — so, regardless of whether or not it's something that everyone has with their memory, I don't think it's a particular problem as such.
Anyway, that is Grumpy Frog. I wanted to acknowledge and celebrate him for a moment, because I hadn't really thought about him for a good few years, but Mr. Wapojif's post reminded me that yes, Grumpy Frog will always be a part of me, for better or worse, and he deserved a bit of time to shine. So there he is.
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