I am maybe four years old. It is early summer, and I'm playing in the garden. I see a frog, bright green, it fascinates me. I watch it for a while, squatting beside it, and trying to ape its hops. Then I get bored. There is a brick lying on the ground. I pick it up and drop it on the frog. It gets squashed flat, its beautiful color begins to dull. I pick it up carefully by one foot and carry it to my old nanny. I think I'm expecting some sort of praise. She looks at me, at the frog, and at me again. After a moment she sighs, and gently takes the frog from my hand. "Now make it alive again," she says, "give it back what you took from it." I'm astounded. "But I can't!" I wail. I begin to cry. I'm a well-behaved child, whatever my nanny tells me to do, I do. But not this time, this time I don't know what to do. "Tell me how," I beg. "Show me!" She shakes her head. "There is no way to do that, my love," she says sadly. She digs a small grave in one of the flowerbeds, lays the little frog in it and covers it. She takes my face in her gnarled hands and looks into my eyes. "Remember," she says, "never take anything you can't give back. Never... From anybody..." It's been almost fifty years since my nanny died. Not one day goes by that I don't remember her words, that I don't regret the death of that little frog. Lale