“Hello my Honey,” I said to my fiancée over dinner. “Hello, my Baby. Hello my Ragtime Gal.”
She smiled her special “I’m humoring you” smile – one that I’m starting to become very familiar with.
“Okay,” she said with resignation, “I’ll bite. What in the world are you talking about?”
It was obvious that she realized I was quoting somebody, but the specific romantic reference was lost on her. This made me smile, because I imagined how embarrassed she would be when I told her that it was a line from a song in a classic cartoon that she had to be familiar with.
“It’s from the cartoon,” I told her. “You know – the one with the frog.”
This brought a blank look. “What frog?”
“You know – the frog. The frog! The singing frog…?”
Another blank look.
“Oh, come on! The singing frog! ‘Hello-my-honey-hello-my-baby-hello-my-ragtime-gal?”
“You already said that,” she said with a slight gritting of her teeth. “I have no idea what you are talking about. This is one of those incredibly obscure references of yours, isn’t it? One of those ones that you think are clever, but nobody has any idea what you’re talking about.”
That hurt.
I explained that no, she had to have seen this cartoon a hundred times. She obviously just didn’t remember it. She replied that she was reasonably certain she had never seen it. I pointed out that there are people living in Third World villages without electricity who are intimately familiar with this cartoon. She shrugged and said that might be true, but she hadn’t seen it. Furthermore, she continued, she was reasonably sure that very few other people had actually seen it, but I was just too stubborn to admit it.
By this time, had left the restaurant and were making our way to our car. I saw a man across the parking lot walking toward the restaurant.
“Excuse me, Sir!” I called out to him.
He looked up, surprised and suspicious. “Sorry to disturb you,” I continued, “but we need you to settle something for us. You know the cartoon with the singing frog, don’t you?”
The man’s face lit up with a nostalgic smile. “You mean the ‘Hello-My-Honey-Hello-My-Baby’ one?” he asked. “That’s a great cartoon!”
We were all startled by a voice from behind us. “I love ThAt CartOOn!” I turned around and saw a drunk who’d been weaving his way out of a bar. “ThAT’s mY FAVORITE carTOon!” He beamed at us.
I beamed back at him. “Thank you very much!” I told him. “She’s never seen it!” I pointed to my fiancée.
“YoU’Re kiDDing!” said the drunk.
“Really?” asked the other guy. “Everyone knows that cartoon!”
“That’s what I said!” I replied, still incredulous.
Okay, never mind that I got in trouble for this. Never mind that this was the first – and probably only – time I’ve ever won an argument with my fiancée. What’s really fascinating is that this was my introduction to a previously undocumented social phenomenon:
If you are a woman and you’ve been patient enough to read this far, you have no idea what I’ve been talking about. You have never heard of the singing frog cartoon either.
The day after I had the singing frog argument with my girlfriend, I happened to be in a meeting with several women. I mentioned the cartoon to them and they had no idea what I was talking about. Later that night, I was out to dinner again and asked my waitress what she thought of the singing frog cartoon. She looked at me like I was from Mars.
It turns out that no woman knows this cartoon.
Think about that for a second: Warner Brothers’ “One Froggy Evening” is one of the best-known cartoons of all time. It is widely considered to be one of the finest short films of the 20th century. Ask any man – ANY man between the ages of ten and fifty, and they are not only intimately familiar with it, but will usually break out singing a chorus of the “hello-my-honey” song. And yet, you never get the same reaction from a woman. Over the past month or so, the staff here at HippoPress has conducted an informal poll. Out of over a hundred women questioned, only two had ever heard of the singing frog cartoon – and then only by chance. This is strictly a guy thing.
It's a pity the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee didn't think to consult with me before last month's games. Given the number of scandals and hurt feelings that accompanied this year's Winter Olympics, the organizers could have eliminated the gender lab tests and built much-needed goodwill by showing the athletes a cartoon.
