I’m the Frog Prince.

Or, at least, I am, according to my childhood best friend, Eddie.

One fateful day back in the summer of 1986, little Eddie Kingsley from two houses down made a snide comment, telling me that my face resembled a frog, to which I responded, “Then pucker up and kiss me, Princess.”

Eddie didn’t like that very much, so he shoved me and jabbed his little finger in my chest, shouting about how he was fed up with my sarcasm and that he wasn’t about to kiss a 12-year-old screw-up such as myself.

It was amusing that Eddie could dish it out but never take it, so naturally, I stuck to my guns and capitalized on his frog insult. I crafted a beautifully average paper crown, then snuck a shawl from my mother’s closet and wrapped it over my shoulders, and voilà! Overnight, I became the charming and irresistible Frog Prince.

I even went as far as making a throne out of a cardboard box, sending out a decree that Eddie had to perform the leapfrog in my presence and even establishing my reign over Eddie’s front porch.

Eddie was so annoyed with me by the end of the summer that he quite literally yelled, “Down with your royal toadness,” before hurtling rocks at me with a handmade sling he made at a Boy Scouts camp a few years prior in Ohio.

After Eddie’s tragic sling attack and a well-practiced eyebrow raise, I scoffed, saying, “Princess—that was the worst assassination attempt I’ve seen.”

Eddie’s face heated into a bright shade of crimson, and he swore at me harshly before storming into his house and slamming the door behind him.

I apologized to Eddie a few days later, of course. He forgave me, and we quickly became the best of friends.

He still hated being called Princess, though.

But I loved it when he called me the Frog Prince.