Have you seen the green frog?

“Are you okay?” I get that question more than normal. I never really understood what it meant. It is like “am I on fire motherfucker.” I guess I some days I have that look like a sexual transmitted disease. That something just ain’t right about that boy and it needs to be checked out by a certified doctor, priest and some scientists

It was a very hot July. I was working some dumb temp job for the summer. Everybody in that room were fucking losers. Some girl was getting evicted from her apartment and complained about it every day. Another barely eighteen year old high school dropout was pregnant again with her third child and couldn’t figure out how to tell her boyfriend who was about to be sentenced for aggravated assault and robbery. I told her to tell him at the trail when they have his violent ass in handcuffs. A white guy was there, no story, just liquor in his coffee cups. An older Asian lady who didn’t speak English but somehow understand the joke I made about her being a crack head. She was the most suspicious, my only evidence and argument about her hourly bathroom breaks where she went shaking but came back suddenly refresh and too much damn energy. And the second to last was the church lady. Her only concern was raising money for some new preacher she found on the internet. I consciously ignored her most cuz I didn’t want to buy her crappy cupcakes, homemade jewelry or tickets to a gospel revival. And then there was me. The good news, I was working. I had big plans for my life to turn it all around, again. I figured god gives an idiot as many chances as it takes. I was fucking retarded. We all got the job through a temp agency. It didn’t pay hooker money but enough to keep the lights on in my apartment.

Lunch break. I decided to make friends with people I knew I’d never see again after I decided I didn’t want the paycheck anymore. We decided to eat out side and that’s when I saw her. Why my life was the way it was suddenly came rushing to the forefront when I saw her. It was more like I felt her. When you have as many secrets as I do, you can feel the truth stalking you. It had to be almost 100 degrees in no shade and she was dancing. She was dancing like voodoo princesses around raging fire. She somehow managed to remove all her clothes except so very dirty pink panties and she was dancing. Her middle aged bloated body jiggled like can biscuits left out in the sun- melted and suspiciously sticky. I knew her. I had lived with her. She was a friend. I hoped like hell she didn’t notice me. I hoped like her we didn’t make eye contact and she’d charge my direction, grabbing me into her arms and making me dance with her. Crazy had found again.

Six months earlier, I had turned thirty and just got out of a mental institution. I wasn’t crazy, just desperate. My life had come apart. I was getting evicted from my apartment. It was something about running a prostitution ring from the Landry room. Sorta true, but that’s another rant. I was 2000 miles away from the nearest relative. I had no money--. Checking account was overdrawn and all my credit cards were in collections. I was fucked.

So I took a knife and carved “Help” in the middle of my chest.

I did have health insurance.

I figured I go to the hospital and let them figure my life out.

I got to the hospital after finishing half of liter of rum. I packed an overnight bag. I don’t know why I thought going to a hospital would make me feel safe. I sure as hell was going to show up at the police station. I wonder was it how homelessness started. I had failed. I was thirty years old and I couldn’t make it as an adult. The nurse when I showed her the wound bleeding from underneath a white t-shirt was horrified. I thought she saw Jesus in my blooded stain cuz she keep yelling at the shirt like she knew it. Like my blood soaked wounds had a name and she was performing an exorcism. I wanted to create drama but not have some old woman drop to her knees and beg some guy named “Holy Spirit” to save my alcoholic life. I knew I was in the right place. I had finally found someone to pity me.

It took way over 14 hours laying in the emergency room before they checked me in. I guess they wanted to see what they could do with my insurance. I didn’t know they were checking me into the Psych ward until after the fact. I figured they would give me a referral to a social worker. They said I couldn’t leave. Something called a 72 hours suicide watch which didn’t make any sense. A big security guard grabbed me. Some lady stuck a needle in my arm. When I awoke, I was handcuffed to a bed. The nurse asked me if “I had seen the green frog.” I asked what the fuck that meant.

For three days I tried to escape. I would awake not knowing the time or day and make a futile mistake for the “exit” door. It was always locked. That big security guard was never far away and the lady with the big needle. I would be out again, and every time I awaken was that same stupid question, “Have you seen the green frog?” After three days in basically a coma, I realized I wasn’t going anywhere. I had to prove to them I wasn’t crazy, just a little eccentric. They said I was depressed and a danger to myself. I had every fucking reason to be depressed. I was broke, unemployed, getting evicted, stubborn, arguably some problems with Bacardi rum but everybody was a danger to themselves, that’s why we come into the world as babies.

But for another 12 days, I would have to figure out what is crazy and to see that damn green frog so I could get out of the ghetto version of a “One who flew over the hoodrat nest.” I thought I knew crazy. I thought the homeless man pissing on himself and laughing at the rain was crazy. I have seen so many version of crackhead crazy. I seen crackhead prostitutes try to sell the button off their ragged blouse for more drugs. There is funny crazy like Tracy Morgan.

Inside that place, I realized mental illness was a fucking real deal. I mean there were people who were faking so they didn’t have to work or have a place to sleep for a couple of days. And then there were the real crazy people. There weren’t funny, drunk or depressed. They were fucking crazy. They weren’t dangerous if unprovoked but convinced of a world nobody could see or understand.

There was the scavenger; he had been looking for a key he lost since 1950. I asked him what the key unlocked, he said Keebler house. He had been looking for those cookies for decades. I told him they sold them at the grocery store. He said he wanted the elves.
He would check all the trashcans everyday.

There was Las Vegas girl I called her. She was convinced in another lifetime she was a topless dancer. Every morning meeting with the crazies where we talked about how less crazy we were that day, the same issue came up with Las Vegas to have her keep her top on. She was that crazy bitch I saw outside new job. I wondered how she got out. She predicted my future. She said I had to lose everything in order to gain a sense of balance again. She said I was meant to be a writer and I wasn’t going to get evicted from my apartment but my lover would leave me. She was right. I wrote a book that year and I didn’t get evicted from my apartment. My lover broke up with me for good.

My favorite crazy was the Doctor. He was convinced the real therapists and nurses were the patients. He would wear his white lab coat everyday and go check on the nurses and with every question they asked him, he turned it around. He was brilliant.

So, have you seen the green frog?

Who told you about this green frog?

It’s our way, to measure if your mind subconsciously remembers some form of reality.”
Reality?

I asked you the question

And why does the frog have to be green?

It’s an easier color for your mind to see when you go to sleep.

So the green frog puts you to sleep?

I will ask the questions.

Again who told you about a green frog? Are you seeing green frogs?

No.

So how do you know you’re not crazy if you ask that same stupid question every morning and night?

Funny, I never did see that damn green frog, but one morning I decided to just agree. I was freed that afternoon.