Hair Trigger 2.0 Issue Two

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Hair Trigger 2.0
a gay couple. Of course, they didn’t live in the same house, much less share a
bedroom. (Though they did fall asleep together outside a couple times.) But I think
parents were comfortable with them because their character archetypes line up
rather comfortably with Bert and Ernie and Felix and Oscar.
Frog is a happy, adventure-seeking, cheerful friend to the stick-in-the-mud,
the sky-is-falling, everything-is-ruined Toad. Frog finds a way to gently get Toad to
enjoy life. Sometimes it’s by playing a simple trick: tearing calendar pages off to
convince the sleepy hibernating Toad that it is May, rather than April, and so he
must come out and enjoy spring, rather than going back to sleep for six weeks,
in the story simply named “Spring” in the Frog and Toad are Friends collection.
In “The Letter,” Frog discovers that Toad gets very sad every day at mail time,
because he’s never, ever gotten a letter. So, Frog goes home and writes him one.
He gives it to the first creature he comes across to deliver it, who happens to be a
snail. He dashes off to wait with his friend. Toad has given up waiting, because it’s
just no use. In the four days it takes to arrive, Frog winds up telling Toad that he has
written him, and what was in the letter. Rather than spoiling the surprise, Toad is
cheered both by the telling and the receiving.
Do not think that Toad is always needy and Frog is always the caregiver who
receives no appreciation or friendship in return. In “A Lost Button” we see the
familiar pattern with a twist. The two have just returned home from a long walk
across the meadow, through the woods and along the river, when Toad realizes
he’s lost a button from his jacket. That depresses him terribly, but Frog says, let us
retrace our steps until we find it. Many of the woodland animals help in the search,
and all sorts of buttons are discovered, all except the right one. Toad pockets them
all, though he is not appeased. Finally, he returns home distraught, to discover his
lost button on his own floor. He realizes he caused a great deal of trouble for his
friend, and he had been very grumpy and unpleasant to be around. He sews all the
buttons he and his friends found onto his coat, giving it a jaunty air, and makes a
present of it to his friend the next day. Frog puts on the coat and jumps for joy at its
beauty.
There is nothing overtly stated or shown to suggest that either
character is gay. The only clue we have is their very devoted friendship. The stories
never touch on the notion of either of them dating other species or genders. The
“proof” is in the absence, in the thing that isn’t there. Perhaps that’s because the
characters are already in a committed relationship. Perhaps it’s because, at the
time they were written, gay couples often needed to be very discreet about their
relationships. They learned to both speak and hear very careful clues that were