Gettin' Money

In my never-ending quest to blend into my environment and possibly even shed my “Whiteman” nickname, I continue to add to my prison vocabulary (think of this as a warped version of Sesame Street’s Word of the Day).  Today’s term, boys and girls, is “Get Money.”   Any guesses?  Okay, here’s a hint:  If you think it has anything to do with real money – bonk! – you’re wrong!  After all, as I’ve explained before, we don’t have any money.  Yes, we do use stamps as currency, so the phrase could be about acquiring stamps.  But no.  Hey, maybe it has something to do with our prison jobs and pay day, when the balance on our commissary accounts get adjusted?  Good guess, but again, nope.  Give up?  Okay.  In here, Getting (or more precisely, Gettin’) Money = Working Out.  For example, “Yo Cheesepuffs, you gettin’ dat money?” or “I’m headin’ outside, gotta get some money!”  Yes, I’m dense.  Been in here nearly two years and just figured this out last week. 

Here’s how:  The library where I work was closed for the afternoon, so I got to enjoy a little time outside.  Weather was beautiful, cool breeze, sky above the wall a cloudless blue.  I was playing racquetball with a friend when he hit the ball onto the roof.  It was our only ball, so game over.  That’s when another guy from the unit called us, shouting, “Yo, you wanna get some money?”  I asked him what he meant and after all the other guys within earshot finally stopped laughing at my ignorance, they explained that it means lifting weights.  Why, I asked?  No really clear thought on that, except maybe building muscle is like “putting money in the bank.”  You know, like you can count on it.  I still didn’t quite see it, but as with many things here, I realized I just had to roll with it.  So we all had a good time working out.  Strenuous, but it felt great.

Jump ahead to the next morning.  Every muscle is sore.  I’m hobbling down the hallway, barely able to move, when someone yells out, “Hey Whiteman, I saw you gettin’ that money yesterday!”  To which I responded with what I thought was bound to catch on as the newest prison slang, “Naw, it’s more like my body kited a check.”  Two people in the vicinity chuckled, but one of them only laughed because he thought I said “kike” and he always laughs at jokes about Jewish people.  So I had to explain that kiting a check means writing a fraudulent one.  Let’s just say that if it takes two or three minutes to explain a punchline, the air kind of goes out of a joke.  A slow and painful death.  On the plus side, though, I am expanding my prison vocabulary.  On the negative side, attempting a joke that was understood by exactly one other person (a white guy) may have dug my Whiteman nickname hole a little deeper.  Glad I didn’t go with my first instinct, something like, “I just wish we could change to a Supply Side model!”