DannyBoyinExile

Today was a typical day around here – typical for Bedlam, at any rate! I woke up around 5:15 am, threw some grease in my hair and slicked it back, brushed my teeth, and drank some coffee while I waited for them to roll the cell doors so I could go to work.
When they finally did, the lady told us that people could only go INTO the cells, and not out, because she was told to rack us all up. We were all up in arms about that, not only because nothing HAPPENED that warranted us being locked down – but also because we were anticipating going to commissary for the first time in nearly a month.
Come to find out, a guard from the night shift decided that he needed to urinate – so he opened the door and did it in the dayroom urinal, just like an inmate would. The inmates in the dayroom laughed at the eccentricity of African immigrants, but it’s not as if anyone was offended by it. When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go! (We’re just glad he didn’t have to defecate!)
The female guard who looked in the window and saw him, on the other hand, WAS offended, and immediately banged on the glass, to show him the error of his ways. Unfortunately, that just about scared the poor guy half to death, so he jumped and turned around – and promptly peed all over the floor, as well.
I hate to see anybody get told on, but the lady who witnessed this incident: not so much. She told the rank on him, and their response was to rack us all up, to clear the dayroom out until they could get someone to sanitize the entire dayroom.
I just so happen to BE one of the guys they’d call for situations like that – but I quickly made my way to the hallway, where I picked up only normal workday activities. (Though I did it as far as possible from the scene of the crime!)
I had an idea that it would be really easy for me to make it into the commissary line, considering that I work in the hallway and I can just GO there, but it was not to be. Alas, the computers were still down, while they overhaul TDCJ’s computer system, so I’ll have to try again tomorrow…
Then one of the oldest guys on my wing got into a fight with one of the youngest guys here – right in the freshly cleaned dayroom… They got caught right away, but luckily THEY went to lockup instead of our whole wing being placed on a 24 hour lockdown.
And did I mention the computers were down? That means the scanners they use in the chow hall didn’t work. Their decidedly low-tech method of preventing people from eating twice was to use a black marker to place an X on everyone’s shirt as they came through the line. I wasn’t about to let them maul my clean, white clothes (that I PAY someone to wash, by the way!) so I decided to skip the meal entirely and eat from my locker instead. My soup with pork skins, cheese, sliced pickles and tortilla chips was just as good as their greasy pork roll, if I do say so myself.
By the time I made it to bed for the night, I was glad to have made it through another stressful day, when nothing seemed to go right. But the more I make it through days like that, without losing my composure and making things worse, the better I get at it. As long as I don’t lose my self-control, I know that I can handle difficult situations, and that’s one way that I was able to learn from even a negative event. I’d be willing to bet that the African guard learned something from his negative situation, too: if you can’t be good, you better be good at it… So says DannyBoy.