Few people would easily make the connection between Candyland and a tiny bird devouring a massive parmesan sub on Manhattan’s 7th Avenue. In life, just like in Candyland, sometimes you win big, and sometimes you go backwards. But the main thing is to just keep going. Because “you never know when you’re going to get Frostine”.

You never know when you’re going to get Frostine

It’s a sticky July evening in the suburbs of Chicago in the year of our lord 1999. I am four years old, completely jazzed up from a day of camp and an overabundance of cherry popsicles. My family and I are just settling down for one of our world famous ‘board game nights’. The perfect bow tied around the perfect summer day.

At four years old, my favorite board game was Candyland.

A brief synopsis for those who are unfamiliar with the game.In Candyland, you draw cards and move your way around the board based on the indicated colors that you drew. Occasionally, you draw character face cards out of the deck that allow your playing piece to zoom to the corresponding character space on the board. Some cards send you soaring back to the start, like Plumpy. But, if you are lucky, you might draw a picture card that lets you hop over entire chunks of the board to first place. 

The absolute “game breaking” card was Queen Frostine. Her character tile was a mere five rainbow squares from the finish line. Passing by Queen Frostine was tasting sweet, sweet victory.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that the Queen Frostine face card was the key to success and, as such, I would try to stack the deck in my favor before the game began so I knew exactly where her card was.

 “Anyone want to play Candyland? Great! I’ll go third.”. 

(Listen. My mother was a teacher for 20 years. That Frostine gambit wasn’t fooling ANYONE). 

My parents told me they wouldn’t play anymore if I continued to cheat because it wasn’t “fun” and I had to play the game “right”.

Turns out, they were astonishingly wrong. Games are WAY more fun when you are winning. There are only so many times you can get absolutely sucker punched in the face by Plumpy and sent careening back to the start tile before you simply have had enough. I would get so pissed off, and many a night ended with me attempting to walk out or flip the board in some capacity. No self respecting four-year-old would settle for anything less than a champion.

But my parents, bless their hearts, wouldn’t let me leave. They made me sit through the agony of losing time and time again – watching me like a hawk for any signs of shoving extra cards up my sleeve or nudging my player token forward a few squares (whoops!). 

I remember one particularly frustrating day where my character token was basically back at the start, and I had to watch in agony as my parents’ player characters crept closer and closer to the end. I wanted to quit. But I drew a card. 

AND IT WAS FROSTINE. 

I didnt even plant the card in the deck! It happened organically!

Excitement washed over me as I dramatically lifted my playing piece and zoomed it over the gameboard. Now a mere five squares from the end, I was back in position to win.

My parents said “You see? You never know when you’re going to get Queen Frostine. That’s why you keep playing”. 

I guess this is what we would now refer to as a life lesson.

In all seriousness, this concept stuck with me to this very day. At four, I was no longer frustrated being behind in the Candyland game. At ten, I struck out more times than I could count on my city softball league before hitting the winning home run in the championship. At sixteen, I spent a majority of my volleyball season benched, only to double down, work harder, and make the all-American team. And at twenty-two, I powered through over 75 job application rejections, only to emerge out the other side with a moonshot role at Google I never in a million years thought I could obtain.

Sometimes, you feel so irredeemably behind in chasing after your goals that you start to question what the point even is to begin with. But the trick is to keep going because… well… you never know when you’re going to get Queen Frostine.

So… how does the Frostine paradigm relate to a tiny sparrow eating a MASSIVE Italian meatball parmesan sandwich in the middle of a Manhattan avenue? 

Allow me to set the scene: it was a horrendously rainy day, and I, in true dumbassery form, had selected this moment to pick up a heavy Breville toaster oven off of Facebook Marketplace. Logistically, I hadn’t thought much (or at all) about how I would actually get the toaster oven back HOME. Ubers had skyrocketed to over $100 and, on principal, I simply refused. I would carry this thing three city miles if it was the last thing I did. 

So there I was, lugging a bulky toaster oven down 8th Ave to the subway in the pouring rain. My arms were holding on for dear life when I saw the tiniest sparrow of all time sitting atop a freshly concocted meatball sub pecking away at more bread than it could possibly consume in its lifetime. 

This bird was having the ultimate ‘Frostine’ moment. And I, soaking wet with shaking arms, was having a ‘Plumpy’ moment. You know who else was having a ‘Plumpy’ moment? The sad sack who dropped their meatball sub. 

But that’s life. Some days are ‘Frostine’ days and some days are ‘Plumpy’ days. On those ‘Plumpy’ days, you just have to keep going. Because you never know when you’ll draw ‘Frostine’. And trust me. Sooner or later, she’ll pop up in ways you won’t even expect.

Take it from this 4-year old ‘Candyland Grand Master’.