AAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Last night I was sitting on my bunk with my earbuds in, listening to the radio and crocheting a holiday blanket to donate to charity.  In my own little domestic bubble.  I did not want to look at, talk to or hear another human being.  Just minding my own business.  Can you picture the scene?  Peaceful, right?  WRONG!  Nothing is ever calm or peaceful in prison.  You can seek a moment of relative quiet, try to carve out a little space, but never with much success.  So, as I sit with my radio and crochet, at last I can’t take it anymore.  I unplug the earbuds, set the radio and blanket down on my locker, pull out my stool and climb up onto my desk, so I can see over the room divider.  Then I scream:  AAAAGGGHHH!!!  (I’m not a big guy, but I can be loud, just ask my kids.  They used to put me on restriction for their events, ordering me to yell only at half volume, and other spectators would sometimes ask me to pipe down.)  So, when I shout this time, all eyes turn my way.  The block falls silent and I let loose:

“I can’t take no more, no mores can I take!” (to quote the wise philosopher Popeye).  Starting at one end of the dorm, I point down the rows, singling guys out as I go.  “You, yes I know you a “mans”, you’ve been telling us all this same thing for nine month at insane volume.  EVERY day at 6 am.  Furthermore, I know that “one of these days someone is gonna make you do sumthin you don’t wanna do.”  Well get to it, will you?  Either smack somebody in the head or shut the F__K up!

Ok, next.  You, the Where’s Waldo on Meth looking fool.  No, you were not head diesel mechanic for Werner Trucking for the entire nation.  You can’t even change the batteries in your radio.  You do not have an architecture degree on the side from the University of Nebraska.  I don’t know if Nebraska has an architecture program, but I do believe a prerequisite would be the ability to speak coherently.  And no, you were not the lead singer of a chart topping country western band.  When you sing at church the minister falls to his knees and begs the Lord Our Father to deliver him from the agony.

Dude with a tattoo that is “an exact copy of the solid gold badge” you had on your “clubbin’ car”!  Well, I hate to break it to you but it’s Aston Martin, not Ashton Martin.

Hey, guy who calls himself the “Black Warren Buffet.”  You did not under any circumstances earn $125k per day currency trading for over three years.  Every day, “right off da rip.”  Over $45 million?  How do I know this?  Well, you’re serving a 15-year sentence for selling crack.  Something you claim you did on the side for just a little cash.

To this whole crew over here, I do not care how much you “love the gun,” how many free bodies you killed, how much product you moved, or anything else about your glamorous criminal exploits.  One, I don’t believe you, and two, I DO NOT CARE!

To the dude who likes to scream at his Baby Mamas on the phone.  Any clue why they won’t send you any money?  Maybe has something to do with you calling them b__ches and whores and ordering them to send some money or else?  Have you noticed you are in prison?  Take what you can get and shut up.

In fact, and this goes for all of you, anything you care to tell me about what a badass you were on the outside, understand that there is not a chance that I could ever care less.  You were not Jay Z’s manager, you were not drafted by the Cincinnati Reds (you can barely make our softball team), you did not spend three years in solitary at Leavenworth for strangling a guard, nor were you set up and sent here by the President because he fears what you know.  Nobody in here was a CIA hitman, and no, you were not a Viet Nam war sniper.  How do I know that?  Well, you’re 54 years old, for one thing.  So, um, you were like one of those notorious 9-year old American snipers in Nam?

My rant coming to an end, I announce that I want to be left alone!  I do not want to talk, I do not need someone to confide my problems to, I do not need a distraction from my concerns.  I know my problem:  I’m in prison.  So, thanks for caring, but sometimes you can even get sick of words of inspiration.  You wake up and see the damned bars and beyond them the barbed-wire coiled fences between you and the world and you just want to be left alone.

I opened my eyes.  I was still sitting on my bunk with my crochet project in my lap.  I’d dozed off.  Earbuds had fallen out.  Hmm, maybe I really should climb up on the desk and unload, tell everyone what I think.  I looked around at the relentless, everyday jabber and clamor.  Put the earbuds back in.  Turned up the volume.  Picked up my crochet needles and went back to work on my blanket.