SOMEONE’S IDEA OF FUN

We visited Corey yesterday, a Sunday. The visitation room filled to capacity by late morning, usual on a Sunday, it generally always being the busiest of the three visiting days allowed each week. More family’s show up this day along with lots of small children and babies, therefore its generally also the noisiest of all the days, and sometimes we’ll find it difficult to hear each other speak. But we make do, its just great to be together, and we don’t visit on that many Sundays.Corey caught us up on the goings-on the past week.

I was especially interested in hearing about his latest experience on the Outcrew. Wednesday they had been taken to another of Taft’s parks to work, somewhat smaller in scope, so it was a more relaxing day for everyone. The weather was beautiful, though slightly warmer than usual for a spring day here, and I knew how much he looked forward to getting out and away from the Camp for a day. At lunch time they were driven over to Jabobs Burgers for lunch, a newer burger joint in town. "The best burgers in town" according to their Supervisor that day. Corey said he thoroughly enjoyed his hot pastrami sandwich and pepsi. When it was time to return to the prison, the Supervisor took some extra time to drive around the community and show the men some local sights. I thought this was a wonderful, kind gesture. For most these men, such as my son, ts been a long time since they have seen anything besides the prison and surrounding desert at the Taft Camp or another prison. I loved that Corey was finally able to see the community his dad and I spent the last five years at, and that I had written of in so, so many of my letters to him.

Last Friday morning there had been an announcement over the loud speaker in the unit that because the facility had scored so well (“thanks in large part to the cooperation and hard work of the inmates“ they were told), in the Camps latest Accreditation Rreview (the prison is a privately operated facility and its imperitive their inspections for accreditation go well in order to keep their contract…ka ching, ka ching), the Warden had approved that two new movies would be shown that evening, Black Swan and The Fighter! Coreys friend and cellmate, Stan, had come into the cube they share to tell Corey the news. He told him everyone was pretty excited because both movies were touted as excellent films, both won awards on Oscar night this year, and both are R rated movies and R rated movies are not allowed to be shown in the prison. A few hours later, after enough time had passed to assure everyone had heard the good news, another announcement came across….that of “...about those movies…April Fools!“. It seems the staff involved in this little prank thought their little joke pretty darned funny. For all the men interred at the camp, who’d been genuinely thrilled at the evenings prospects, it having been all the buzz , well, they were not laughing. I like a good joke but not at someone’s expense and wondered at this lack of sensitivity … that this could really be someones idea of a joke under the circumstances and that it would be “acceptable“ behavior for the staff at Taft.

Luckily Corey had been dubious from the start (he learned early on in this journey "no expectations/no disappointments") ... when Stan had first delivered the news he’d said to him “think about it Stan, whats the date today?“….Stan had looked at him, shook his head, got a sick look on his face and said “no way, they wouldn’t do that”….guess again.

"It is better to weep with wise men than to laugh with fools". Spanish Proverb