This week in the gulag has been enlightening in a new way. My housing area has been changed and I'm in a dorm setting with a new group of youngsters in my immediate bed area. The first days with new people is always contentious. Everyone is figuring out their place in the social hierarchy and whether the new additions are friendly, to be feared, or forced out. We (the new group) didn't find any major discrepancies so the uneasy peace settled in. Within a couple of days true identities began to surface. A couple of my dorm mates, the youngsters, were more prone to social mixings. They were and are currently mostly in the company of others swapping war stories and playing the biggest whoppes game. A contest that prisoners engage in where each inmate in turn tries to bolster their rep and gain status by cooking up the biggest and best pot of bullshit about the lives they led before prison. Great fun but always leaves streaks of resentment in and stinky cocked eyebrows.
There are a couple of older dudes who are closer to bed ridden and tuned into every broadcast hour beaming through charters wires and satellite signals. These dudes are low key, don't talk a lot and are content in their own space.
Then there are the in-betweens, which is the group I fit into mostly. I don't mind the occasional visitor, but its just as good to be able to read, write, or watch a show without a crowd or block party on my book. The easy peace was shattered about day 4 , when one youngster got knee deep in the biggest whoppes games and started using the N-word with every other syllable he spoke in place of commas in his sentences and with the boisterous enthusiasm of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh spreading the news of an upcoming birthday party all over the 100 acre wood.
I'm not or I hate to be a fogie but, in the presence of white, Mexican and Native American men of different ages, the rant which was animated and filled with scandalous women and step by step instructions of how to consume multiple drugs and drinks before during and after driving, the constant N-word utters hurts my ears through headphones and my earnest attempts to watch Sleepy Hollow. So to spare the waning shreds of dignity us in-between brothers had cultivated before the young-en got going I pulled him to the side and tried my best to let him know how bad of a look that was for all of us. Him especially because judgments were passed as soon as his lips parted and that madness begin to flow out. For us as a whole, because if we didn't stop him it speaks to the groups collective acceptance of the term.
I know I know its 2014 and everyone should be over the N-word. Especially here, right? We're all supposed to be hardened thugs and hoods. The very picture of what the N-word is, now that's not it. hearing the young man go into a loud reckless tantrum filled with the N-word and bullshit stew was the most uncomfortable and embarrassing two minutes of the week. Its risky business injecting social corrections in this place because many youngsters don't have the filter or the basic rules of the road I learned before I left the safety of my mothers shadow. And calling them out for corrections could draw young misguided fire in my directions. But if not us, who?
Sitting by idly while the ignorance flows out is the same as engaging in the bad behavior. Even if the young man didn't get the lessons my mom taught me, Even if his peer group all act the same, even if my advice and urging's fall on deaf ears. If i didn't try, I might as well roll up my sleeves and dig into the vaults of my gin soaked episodes and show the cheeseburger children what a whopper really is.
Trust me there's 40-50 plus dudes here that do just that. But I learned from this one episode that even here, I, we and by extension you.... Can make a positive change in someones life. I'm not sure if that what I'm here for. But while I am here I'm positive its what I'm gonna do. You can be the example at work, in the mall, at the restaurant or while driving of a positive way to behave. Not saying be a busybody, but if you see the opportunity to be positive or help someone that may not see the picture you do, share some of your awesome with them.
If not us, then who?
R. Venner
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