DannyBoyinExile

I’m at work the other day, and decide I need to soak my state shirt in some bleach, as I prefer to keep it “icy white” as opposed to “off-white”. Of course, when you need a little bleach, there’s no better place to find it than the laundry, which is ground zero for bleach. So I set about asking various washer operators, SSIs, and hustlers in general – and a Mexican friend of mine came to the rescue. “Grab that bleach off the counter right there – just save me a little of it.”
I’m assuming it’s HIS bleach, that he’s gonna use to clean the bathroom or whatever (what else CAN I assume?) – but you know what they say about assuming things. A few seconds later, a rather large Black guy comes up to me and says, “Save me a little of that.”
I’m like, “Sorry. So-and-so already asked me to save HIM some.”
He’s like, “Dude. What do you mean you can’t? That’s MY bleach!”
Clearly there was a misunderstanding. But not on my part – I asked for the bleach, and it was given to me. I had right on my side, for once in my life! I told him, “So-and-so just said I could have this bleach, and asked me to save him some of it.”
Naturally, he calls the dude over, for clarification. “How are you gonna give this man MY bleach?”
The best he can come up with is, “I thought somebody just threw it there for whoever to use, so I let him use it.”
The guy is kinda mad, but it’s not really a big deal, because bleach is easily replaceable – especially in the laundry. But he took it a little too far. He said, “How would you like it if I went over to the bench and grabbed YOUR shit, and gave it away?”
He was in the right, of course. But he had the wrong attitude about it. So the other guy told him, “Go over there and try it, and let’s see what happens!”
Now there’s tension, but I did my best to intervene. “Don’t worry about it. I’LL give you some bleach back, since I’m the one who used it.”
Both of them are steamed about it, so they go to their respective homeboys to vent. At that point, it’s out of my hands. (They were two different races, which had nothing to do with me.) (Well, except for the fact that I used his bleach!)
This was one of those times when a good reputation will come to your assistance. As they are discussing the situation, I hear outsiders from both sides saying, “Man, I KNOW DannyBoy. There’s no way he’s just gonna grab somebody’s shit like that. He’s been locked up over thirty years! Besides – he just doesn’t do shit like that.”
Even so, I still offered to replace the guy’s bleach, so at least he’d have a little to use for whatever he needed it for. But the guy came to me himself and told me not to worry about it, because it wasn’t my fault. (He’d known me for years, after all.)
The other guy was a friend of mine too, so I hated to see them at odds. I like the guy (I mean, he just gave me some bleach! :-}), but he was clearly in the wrong for giving me somebody else’s stuff. In the end, there was no “drama” between the two – but to this day, they don’t associate with each other anymore.
The bleach itself was a trivial matter – it wasn’t even worth a dollar. But there’s no such thing as just “finding” something in prison. If something is laying somewhere, it’s because someone LAID it there. Even if someone mistakenly dropped it, that still doesn’t make it yours. There’s no such thing as “finders, keepers” around here – that only applies until the owner FINDS OUT who found it!
Lastly, it’s never a bad idea to be respectful to someone. You may be in the right, as far as a particular situation goes. But you can always make matters worse, and lose your upper hand, simply by making comments that can and will be found offensive. You don’t have to be a politician to be diplomatic – sometimes it’s just the smart thing to do. So says DannyBoy.