after Frogger

Day one on the job, the boss has me slip into the company’s frog suit & commence training at the highway outside our strip-mall office suite where I hopscotch in rush hour traffic until a Ford F-450 flattens me like a penny beneath a cargo train. My left arm rips off, the assistant supervisor blows her whistle, & I peel myself from the asphalt, limping to the sidewalk for Marva Maid & a Nutra-Grain bar. Before I can reach the curb, the boss clicks her stopwatch, asks if I can perform a one-handed cartwheel, & my face collides with a stretch hummer’s bumper. I flip-flop in the air like a flapjack, my other arm snaps out of its socket, &, upon descent, a Keystone Light semi-trailer steamrolls my torso into the ground. When I prop up, my right knee pops & the boss reminds me that we don’t have health coverage though overtime opportunities abound. “Can you balance our poster on your nose?” she asks. “You know, like a seal with a beachball,” the assistant adds. I weasel between lanes & a teenager powering an electric scooter pops a wheelie on what’s left of the frog suit’s head. “Are those Nutri-Grains strawberry, blueberry, or apple?” I ask.