DannyBoyinExile

The other day I was in my bunk, sound asleep (like most civilized people are at 2am!), when one of my bosses from the laundry showed up at my cell. “DannyBoy! Come on, you’re going to work.”
Well, if I had died in my sleep, I clearly didn’t make it to heaven – because he was no angel, for sure. To make matters worse, it was freezing cold! We’d gotten our first cold front of the fall, and they still hadn’t handed out jackets, so I was as snuggled up as I could be, with my sheet wrapped around me like a cocoon. (Or a burrito!)
I pride myself on being known as a good worker, who is reliable, and always willing to help. So at times like this, I never complain. I threw my clothes on, slicked my hair back, and brushed my teeth. I quickly showed up at the laundry, where all the other hardest workers were waiting on me, 2am or not. “Yeah! Get your ass to work, we’ve got blankets to hand out!” We all laughed – and we were all secretly relieved to see each other. There were no complaints about it being 2am, or being a Sunday, when we were ALL off. We were the guys who would “git ‘er done.” WHATEVER needed doing – we’d do it, do it right, and do it quickly.
But that didn’t make it EASY, by any means! We scrounged up every available cart we could find, and made a caravan to where the blankets are stored. Then we loaded each cart with bundles of blankets, and pushed them back (uphill!) to the laundry. We went to every wing, dorm, nook and cranny of the Wynne Unit, and gave a blanket to each and every inmate here. I lost count of how many flights of stairs we climbed, how many runs we walked up and down (carrying armloads of blankets!), and how many trips we had to make with our carts, to pick up more blankets.
We were all tired, hungry, and SORE, from working our asses off. But we were also proud to BE one of the people they’d call on, at times like this. Honestly, it even felt good to hear so many inmates thanking us – because they were REALLY cold, until we showed up with blankets just as they needed them. We did our part, but it was the administration here (such as the Warden and the laundry Captain) who made the call. They knew it was cold, so they did something about it. We just stepped up and did our part, like they knew we would.
Our team may have looked like a really motley crew, with names like Mondo, Nine, Chevy, Tacklebox, Tristan, and Peña (not to mention DannyBoy!) but we were all happy to be there – and would have felt left out if we HADN’T been called.
Martin Luther King said that to get the true measure of a man’s character, you must see him in adversity. And I understand exactly what he meant. You can’t look at how someone acts when everything is going right, to see what they’re made of. You have to look at him when things go wrong, bad news is all he receives, and disaster strikes, to get a picture of his TRUE character. (Or you can look at him at 2am on a Sunday, when he’s cold, tired, and hungry!)
In the free world, I didn’t pay much attention to things like character, integrity, honesty, or having a good work ethic. But it’s the things like that that make you stand out from the people around you, wherever you find yourself. At the end of the day, they’re all just parts of being a good dude, in general. If a flashlight can even shine in something as dirty as a trashcan, then I can even shine in something as gloomy as a prison. So says DannyBoy.