Random recollection...There was a little creek where, growing up, we would dip our toes under its tiny falls despite our parents' constant admonishments not to. They were fearful of fertilizers on small feet, but we, young and invincible, cared not at all for their concern, always convinced that their rules were invented merely to spoil our fun, because they had forgotten how to have fun of their own. There was a quiet place where the water pooled, and each spring, as if by magic, thousands and thousands of tadpoles would appear. Every year I would gather a dozen or so in my plastic aquarium and watch, fascinated, the graceful metamorphosis, fussing to be sure they had enough food and the proper proportions of air and water. Every year I would release a dozen or so tiny frogs back into the creek. Every year save one. A neighbor girl, feeling somehow slighted by this private pageant, unable to understand my wonderment, tipped over the tadpoles onto the pavement in the hot Oklahoma sun. How I cried when I saw, and resolutely grieved those delicate lives so easily destroyed, victims of a child's ire.