Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Prisoners are a funny lot

Prisoners are a funny lot, no doubt me included. When I say "funny" I am talking/writing about ha ha hilarious funny, and "keep your eye on THAT one" funny - and all shades in between. I wonder where I would fit in that scale, the scale of the wonderful and weird? Henceforth, that will become the WW scale and hopefully will take over from the Beaufort scale. 

Anyway, that's not the point. I'm not talking about where I (or anyone else for that matter) would fit in the WW scale, the point is that prisoners are a funny lot.

Yesterday there was a conversation between several of my fellow incarcerees (a fine word, if it exists). During the conversation, one fellow, a most devout junkie, said words to this effect:


"Frank, you've been in jail now for a long time, you must have tried heroin!"

I said, "I would rather remove my own bollocks with a set of rusty garden shears. That road leads to disaster, and the first thing anyone loses is their pride and self-respect. I've got too much pride, probably false but pride all the same, and too much self-respect. Fuck heroin, it's a complete mug's game."

He couldn't let go, probably suffering from Asperger's syndrome. "You must have tried something!" he insisted.

"Oh don't get me wrong," said I. " Many years ago, over twenty years ago in fact, I used to smoke a bit of ganja now and then - it was the only way I could get to sleep at night. I had to stop smoking that when I started the studying and I've never wanted to smoke it since."

"Yeah," said someone else, "I like a smoke of Marley's Medicine myself, but I wouldn't touch hard stuff - no powders."

The advocate of the product of the poppy said, "Yeah, but..."

I cut him off. "Listen," said I, "you have to accept the fact that not everyone has porridge for brains like you. You have to understand that not everyone is as weak-willed as you are. Just because your own values allow you to justify stupidity, you mustn't put your values onto others."

Another fellow said, "Yeah! A lot of people do that, apply their own values to other people."

"That, my friend," said I, "is why people get so many things wrong about others."

"That's right," said yet another participant in the chat, "I've noticed that. These fucking psychologists for a start..."

And the conversation moved on to other topics, as conversations do.

People DO have a tendency to apply their own values to others and can't understand why others don't have the same values. Personally, I think it is a character thing, involving both nature, nurture and, of course, what we are educated to in life. Some folk never swear or curse, while others never stop - and I point no fingers (ho ho). Others, myself included, would never raise our voices to a woman, never mind our hands, yet some think it is okay to hit a woman from time to time. (Let's face it, if a woman is annoying a man so much that he is tempted to become violent, it's time to fold up the tent and leave, because clearly someone is unhappy in that relationship.)

Anyway, prisoners talk about all sorts of things like this, and sometimes it is almost interesting, though not very often. We are a rude, crude bunch - it comes with the territory unfortunately. As I say, prisoners are a funny lot.

The Voice In The Wilderness

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