The Mark Of A Convict

I used to boast, when I was in prison, that my first infraction was for assaulting a guard. I didn't even have to lie. I'd just say, “I hit a guard in the head with a garbage can lid.” Technically that was the truth, and recently when the Federal prosecutor brought that infraction report into court as evidence of my “past violent behavior in prison”, I didn't challenge it. But, here's what really happened. I was working in the kitchen “garbage room” with another inmate. Our job was to take the garbage from the room to the back loading dock, and empty it into the garbage truck when it arrived. The cooks had changed the oil in the friers the day before. So there were about a half dozen boxes of empty Crisco cans. Each can was the same size as a regular can of Crisco oil and each one also came with its own plastic lid for resealing the can if it is only partially used. Each box held about 24 cans and consequently, about 24 plastic lids, which the cooks threw into the boxes loose with the cans after emptying them. So my co-worker and I were throwing the lids at each other like frisbees. They were harder to catch than to throw, so the object was to try to catch the lids the other guy threw with one hand, while throwing lids back with the other, all as fast as we could; scoring short-lived bragging points for “good catches”. The kitchen guard, c/o Tobin, was a layed back older man who I thought was “friendly”, as far as my very limited experience with guards went at the time. So when he walked into the garbage room and told us to get back to work, I jokingly threw one of the lids at him and shouted, “Tobin! Catch this!” (Those were the exact words that Tobin himself wrote in the infraction report). I expected him to turn when I called his name, but he was saying something to my co-worker, and turned about a second too late, just in time for the five-inch plastic lid to hit him on the forehead above his left eye, by surprize. I laughed and said, “Opps... you were supposed to catch it, sorry!” The other inmate and Tobin suddenly weren't smiling. I didn't understand it at the time, but I had just violated a subtle, but serious prison taboo; inmates don't familiarize themselves with the guards, no matter how friendly they are. Of course, Tobin was not injured in the least. But, a line had been crossed and he had to make sure that I understood I was never to cross it again. He wrote me up for “Assault on a guard”, one of the most serious infractions possible. I couldn't believe he wrote me up at all, much less for such a serious infraction. I thought he was such a nice guy. But, I had a lot to learn and this was to be only my first of many “lessons”, over the years, that came in the form of unexpected infractions. I learned that there is an invisible but well defined social stratum line between guards and inmates; guards above, inmates below. I learned that while conventional etiquette crossed that line freely enough, familiar things such as trust, genuine concern, and any kind of intimacy, were strickly barred from crossing between the two strata. I learned that no matter how friendly a guard was, they could never be my friend. I eventually learned to hate the “System”, and that was an important part of my prison education that helped keep me alive. Other inmates can “feel” this hatred in each other, and it's not easy to fake. It is the mark of a convict, and the basis for a code that I learned and lived by in order to survive, and “stay out of trouble”. Of course, it is also the basis for what prison officials call, “criminal mentality”, and what psychologists call, “anti-social personality disorder”. Inmates are trained to hate the System, by the System. And nobody seems to care; not even when that hate gets escalated by the same “Criminal Justice” System into a murderous rage.