The Horney Toad Club
Forney, TX | June, 2020
At Kriswell Elementary school, a simple game of “telephone” during a bathroom break shattered my wohld.
Sorry, world.
The secret word being passed down a squirmy line of first graders through whispers in cupped hands was “purple.” I leaned into my classmate and whispered the secret word, elated with my participation in the bout of high-stakes communication. My enthusiasm was met with confusion. I leaned back in, cupped my hands and repeated myself hushedly, “purple, pass it on!”
Confusion, again. I repeat myself from a distance, flustered. “Purple, pass it on!”
My break in the whisper chain drew significant attention. I was so frustrated at my classmate for not understanding the simple color that I repeated it one last time, at the top of my lungs, “PURPLE, PASS IT ON!”
Unbeknownst to me, my classmate’s confusion was warranted, seeing as I was saying “puh-ple” in his ear with increasing aggression. Our teacher, bless her heart, figured now was as good a time as any to give me a public lesson in pronouncing the letter R.
“Repeat after me, Molly. Purple,” she said.
“Puh-ple.”
“No, puRple.”
“PuH-ple.
“PuRRRRRRple!!”
“PuHHHHHHple!!”
So it began; My involvement in the Horney Toad Club.
Twice a week I was pulled out of my normal school schedule to sit in a windowless room with a Speech Therapist and Logan. Logan usually only spoke through a dictation keyboard. When he did speak, he sounded like me. The letter R, as hard as we tried, came out as a soft “wuh”; other times a plump “awh.”
In an effort to give us a sense of pride while correcting our mispronunciations, our Speech Therapist gave our club of two a mascot. The animal was intentionally selected for optimal speech practice.
She would hype us up, saying,
“Who are we?”
“We awh the How-ney Toads,” we would repeat.
“I said, who arrrrre we?”
With a bit more gusto, “We awh the How-ney Toads!”
The Horney Toad is a spiked lizard protected in the state of Texas. They are docile sunbathers with boney horns on their heads. Logan thought our mascot was weally- sorry- really cool. After a couple of weeks of meeting for speech therapy, Logan arrived to class with a full size tin traffic crossing sign. Along with a silhouette of the Texan lizard, the yellow sign read, HORNEY TOAD X-ING. You guessed it! The sign was custom made with gweat pwide.
One of the activities for practicing pronouncing our “Rs” correctly was a McDonalds Drive-Thru role play. The windowless classroom was furnished with a plastic kitchen and restaurant, complete with a McDonalds visor and faux headset. When I put that headset on, I became a Drive-Thru employee. There was no speech therapy happening, only serious Drive-Thru business. The Speech Therapist tried her best to engage with Logan and I, ordering foods with multiple “Rs” and asking for her order to be repeated back to her. We simply did not have time for that! We had a lunch rush to get through! Despite her efforts, I would take my Therapist’s play money, shut the window and continue barking orders to my grill chef, Logan.
“Molly, I ordered a large French fry. Can you say that back to me?”
“Logan, put 2 mo-wah bu-gahs on the gwill! We gotta long line of cawhs today!”
Eventually my mouth memorized the shape and feel of a proper “R”. My last day of therapy Logan and I were bummed to not have a designated play time together anymore. “Are we still the Horney Toad Club?”, he typed into his dictation keyboard. Of course we are. Even into middle school, Logan and I would high five in the hallway with the proud declaration,