Gingerbread Whut?

Late night meetings in the Spanish TV Room among O.G. (Original Gangsta), Slugger, A-Rod, El Jefe and Mobile Vending.  Inmates posted up at the door to make sure no one from another unit enters.  Prepping an innocuous looking dude to be a spy, to infiltrate the other units.  Bad jokes circulate along the lines of “your mission, should you choose to accept it….”  Rounds of drinks (actually sodas) shared between groups of guys who never talk to each other.  Then a harsh debate that devolves into laughter over the best colors to use when … painting a four foot tall model of a lollipop?   Whut? 

You read that right.  We aren’t setting up for trouble.  No uprising in the works. 

No, we are building a 6-foot model of a Gingerbread House.  That’s right, all these BA convicts are pulling together with a shared purpose and guess what?  It’s amazing how much fun people are having.  Just goes to show if you give a guy an actual goal even guys you least expect can rise to the occasion.  The administration stumbled onto genius:  A Unit vs. Unit Holiday Decorating Contest.  At first the idea was met with typical cynicism.  They have official visitors arriving next week and want to put on a dog and pony show.  F___ them, most said.  But then one guy suggested, wait a minute, this might be fun, then another guy signed on, then a third respected prisoner joined in.  Their rationale?  Look, of course this is an administrative ploy (well, probably not, just dumb luck), but screw that.  Let’s just run with it.

That’s all it took.  Isn’t the old saying, “Incarceration is the Mother of Invention?”  So now we have gumdrop and candy painters, roofers, framers, background landscapers.  I crocheted a Santa Head to poke out of the chimney.  While maybe not Macy’s Parade worthy, our Gingerbread House beats anything you would buy at Michael’s.  No Lie!  I’d put it in my yard at home.  Pardon the language, but as one of our oh-so-hard straight from the hood gangstas put it when he looked up from his work covered in pink and purple glitter, “Damn, we got some talented-ass mother f______ers in here!  Why they let us waste away in prison?”  Funny and thought-provoking.  The human warehousing system we call the BOP Must Be Fixed!  But that is another letter.  For now, I just shake my head and smile.

I mean, maybe what we have here is the real holiday spirit.  Making the most of what you have, pulling together as a team, fellowship amongst diverse people.  Laughter.  Sharing.  A common goal.  Maybe I’m completely full of shit, I don’t know.  What I do know is that it’s a lot more pleasant to hear guys arguing over the proper application of glitter instead of Lebron vs. Steph and their Ticket!  So today we are mixing paints and hoarding cardboard.  January 2^nd all this stuff will be contraband again, but oh well.  One Day at a Time!

Happy Holidays!!

Climbing the Mountain

Winter.   Cold.  Dark.  Game of Thrones?  Nope, prison, winter being the toughest season to make it through.  Less to do and more time to do it.  Luckily, I’m in the South.  Can’t imagine spending the long months of winter imprisoned in some place like Minnesota.  But even here, when it’s cold, you can’t go out.  Cooped up inside, guys grow antsy, restless, and irritable.  The noise increases.  Sometimes it’s like an all-day basketball tournament in a crowded high school gym.  “Showin’ out” reaches epic levels.  Showin’ Out?  That’s the intentionally loud, obnoxious, look-at-me behaviors.  Yelling, rapping, arguing.  Reverberating throughout the unit.  In better weather, people go outside when they can.  They play cards or dominoes, they share stories, pictures and food.  But this time of year, while it’s not northern cold, it is too chilly to just sit around outdoors.  Most days, if you stay active, maybe working out for an hour or so, you can tolerate it, but just relaxing, trying to get a moment’s peace in the out of doors?  Not happening.

So the indoor crowding and the noise, sharing of resources and frustration that comes of it amplify.  I mean, most guys are not in prison due to their mastery of delayed gratification.  They jump lines for the laundry or computer room, hog tables for games, take control of the tv channel.  Tempers flare.  Add in the holidays and being here instead of home and you end up with 140 men just praying for Spring.  What to do?

I think of each day as a mountain that needs climbing.  I get up and sling on my backpack of mental barriers (some guys pray, meditate, or pace – I crochet), take my first steps on the path.  I fill up a big jug of patience for the journey, then decide on a mantra to chant as I go.  Instead of a true mantra, I opt for a daily goal, as corny as that may sound.  It might be based on some kind of personal growth, maybe working out or studying Spanish or helping others; it might be something generic like “no negative talk.”  All ready to go, I start the climb.  Yes, there will be obstacles (internal and external) along the way, the path is steep.  Just slog along, focused on my goal and the mountaintop of bedtime.

Some days I make it through with ease; others I struggle to the summit, and at times I fall short.  However the climb went, at the end of the day I pop in my earplugs, crawl into bed (under the sheets! – see previous post) and review how things went.  What went wrong?  What went well?  What might I do better tomorrow?  Then I read for a few minutes, turn out the light, try to let go of the tension of prison life, and hopefully sleep undisturbed.

Then it’s morning.  I open my eyes and yep, still in prison!  I check the bars on the window, the cinderblock walls, and turn to the mountainous day ahead.  I get a cup of coffee, my crocheting, set my daily goal.  One of these days the climb will end with me walking out the front gate.  For now, though, even at the holidays, I just have to take it one mountain at a time.