Drunken Pumpkin

Segregation is the adultery of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.

One of the first writing assignments I give to any of my students is to tell me a story about something important in their life. It always shocks me the number of people that complain about an assignment of this type. After all, it doesn’t require research and is about everyone’s favorite topic, themselves. From my end it’s a great assignment, because I’m reasonably certain they can’t cheat on it, and it lets me know what level of story telling my students have. If you can’t tell a story you can’t argue a point. So, it’s best to get that kind of thing out of the way pretty early on.

However, I teach in prison. And those folks have some interesting stories to tell. Even the ones that couldn’t tell you the subject of a sentence if their life, or grade, depended on it. From these essays, I’ve learned some valuable truths.

1) All felons love their kids. They love them so much, and want to keep the family together that they will sell drugs, rob, or kill in order to do so, even if that means a prison term. (Look, they’re felons, logic is not necessarily a strong suit. Besides, that just means they’re stupid, and stupid is curable.)

2) Never have kids when you’re under the age of 16. Most people know this one, but sometimes you need an object lesson.

3) It’s better to get locked up for 50 years for something you didn’t do, than it is to snitch. This one is so prevalent that my students won’t even tell me when someone is in the bathroom.

4) The Females love a playa. I’m not real sure what that means, but it seems to come up a lot.

5) Doing crack before heading to school in the fifth grade, no matter how fun, will only cause trouble in the end.

I’ve learned lots of other valuable advice from my students, but those seem to be the big life lessons. Tune in tomorrow for more of the exciting adventures of Pyrophage behind bars.