DannyBoyinExile

The other day, I met a homeless person for the first time – right here in TDCJ! I was in the dayroom, and noticed a pile of property stacked neatly in the corner. I wasn’t sure if it was a garage sale, an auction, or just free stuff in case anybody needed any of it – so I did the sensible thing, and left it alone.
Come to find out, it belonged to a guy I actually knew, who had a cellmate that he couldn’t stand. (It was mutual, I’m sure.) They actually came to blows one day, and he decided that he needed to move. So he packed his stuff, brought it to the dayroom (so he didn’t have to worry about his cellie stealing any of it, presumably), and told the rank he needed to be moved.
Apparently they didn’t take him seriously, or had more important matters to worry about, because he never got a “move slip” telling him what cell to move to. So he did what any sensible person WOULDN’T do: he simply walked up and down the run until he found an empty bunk in a cell with somebody he felt compatible with – and he just moved in!
Needless to say, that just does not happen around here. For one thing, nearly every time they count the wing (which is several times a day), they want to see our ID cards, which they compare to their roster, to make sure the proper person is in the cell. (They don’t call it a roster count for nothing!)
I’ve read that the best lies are based on truth, to an extent, and it seems to have been proven true in this case. Every time a guard came by asking to see his ID, the same scenario unfolded.
“Hey – you’re not on my roster!”
To which he would say, “Ma’am (or Sir), I just moved up here from such-and-such cell. I didn’t get along with my cellie, so they moved me up here.”
They would look at the cell he indicated, see that he actually WAS on the roster there, mark him as present – and keep going. This happened at least once per shift, for three whole days!
I didn’t even know what was going on, until I saw him carrying his property to a cell near mine. I was like, “You’re moving AGAIN?”
I assumed that he’d finally got caught squatting in the wrong cell, and was instructed to move into the RIGHT cell. But that wasn’t the case. They were trying to move someone else into the cell, since it was empty (on paper, at least), so like Willie Nelson, he was On The Road Again. He had no choice but to leave.
Rather than doing the right thing, and moving to his original cell, or going to the supervisor and demanding to be separated from the guy he couldn’t get along with, he did the next best thing. He did some house-shopping until he found another cell he liked, and moved in.
I’m like, “Dude – that’s CRAZY! You cannot do that! They are going to lock your ass up (or at least WRITE your ass up) when you eventually mess up count because you were in the wrong cell. You need to go talk to the rank, so they will move you (officially, I mean), and you can get settled in wherever you’re going to stay. Besides – who wants to be moving, and having to clean up a different cell, every few days?”
So he took my advice, and got the situation resolved. Now he’s on a different wing, with a different cellmate – but at least he’s official.
It’s good to think outside the box, in general. But we should also keep in mind that all ideas aren’t good ones. What makes you stupid isn’t that you had a bad idea, but that you DID it, without thinking about it first. That can make even the smartest people look stupid. So says DannyBoy.