{"id":10615,"date":"2022-03-03T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lafayettepark.org\/staging_5\/?p=10615"},"modified":"2022-02-27T17:19:41","modified_gmt":"2022-02-27T17:19:41","slug":"small-dark-handsome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lafayettepark.org\/staging_5\/small-dark-handsome\/","title":{"rendered":"SMALL, DARK & HANDSOME"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY\u00a0KIERAN LINDSEY, PhD<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

Once upon a time, when I was a girl, I was far more interested in frogs than in fairy tales.<\/h4>\n

I wasn’t all that enchanted by the Disney princesses of my 1960s childhood, either \u2014 Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty. Maybe that’s because I was born middle class but I think it was mostly because had different dreams. I wanted to become a writer, an artist, and a scientist. I was looking for a life that offered something more intellectually challenging than deciding which gown I should wear to the ball… not that I was keen on attending such an event in the first place. After all, glass slippers are useless on a hiking trail, and where was the adventure in finding and marrying some privileged slacker bro who would expect his spouse to hang around the castle all day? Boooring!<\/h4>\n

Disney’s second generation princesses of the 1990s \u2014 Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan \u2014 wore more sensible shoes as they took steps toward a more empowered life. By then , however, I was already an adult, and the role models I looked to were more substantial than drawings on celluloid or pixels on a computer screen. .<\/h4>\n

It wasn’t until Pixar brought brave M\u00e8rida to life that my interest in allegorical heroines was reanimated.<\/h4>\n

So, as you might imagine, I was caught completely off-guard when, strolling through the shire one evening, a dashing young prince in the guise of a Blanchard’s Cricket Frog (Acris blanchardi<\/em>) bounced out of the shadows and onto the path before me, demanding a kiss.<\/h4>\n

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In every way but one he was a character straight out of Central Casting, warts and all. In the dim light of dusk it was difficult to tell whether his pebbly complexion was brown, grey, olive green, or possibly some combination of all three. There was no mistaking that confident swagger, though. He was dark and handsome, and boy did he know it.<\/h4>\n

But he was definitely not tall. Bathed in moonlight, my half-inch high (1.6 cm) prince inflated his throat and launched into an aria with a voice as big as ever after.<\/h4>\n

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How to describe that serenade? He wasn’t Pavarotti, that’s for sure. Not Frank Sinatra, or Julio Iglesias, or Barry White. None of those crooners have percussive voices reminiscent of stones bumping against one another to create a spark. The closest match I can think of would be Louis Armstrong’s wonderful gravelly baritone (even though my troubadour was a tenor).<\/h4>\n