A BLIND MAN WALKS INTO A BAR ...
A PRISON GUARD TELLS A JOKE ...
I tended to record everything in my diary. Including stupid jokes. Here’s one, but it took on significance because of how it happened.
This is the pod we are all locked in 24/7. You only go in or out through the security door, and typically in handcuffs. We are dressed in a bright orange suit. The guards (the CO - Correctional Officers - they hate being called "guards") physically and psychologically on one side, and we, the inmates, are on the other. When a CO comes in the pod, it's almost always to do a cell search, or sometimes in the middle of the night, to take someone in the dead of night to federal prison. That always felt peculiar. You get to know someone, over the course of weeks, or even months, and then one day he's just suddenly gone. That's the policy. You are never told when you will leave and be taken elsewhere, for security reasons. So you just discover that someone is gone the next day. Sometimes it felt to me like the invasion of the body snatchers.
This is the "bubble", where the CO resides on his 8-hour shift. On the other side is the pod. It has to be the most boring job on earth. Some fall asleep from time to time. Some commit suicide. Not in the bubble of course. I don’t know why, but suicide is higher than normal among Correctional Officers.
Why are suicide rates so high among corrections officers?
By Associated Press
January 9, 2018 | 10:34pm | Updated
That's the mail slot below the window. All communication with the CO is via that little window in the center. The computer next to him is how he connects to the cell doors, to buzz inmates in or out. There's always this physical and psychological distance between COs and the inmate. It feels like a kind of "us" vs. "them”. There's nothing intimate about our interaction. If they approach you it's to cuff you or to search you. When they get on the speaker, it's to call someone to go to court or to go to medical. Either way, get ready to be handcuffed. It's all quite dehumanizing.
This is why this tiny little incident felt so bizarre. The CO gets on the speaker, and the pod goes quiet. What now? Who’s in trouble now? We listen. The CO starts giggling. WTF? And then he starts with a joke. He says, "A blind man walks into a bar ..." and we're in the pod, looking at each other, silently wondering, where is this going? The CO is already giggling before the punch line, and he can’t quite finish the joke. Ok, so the blind man walks into a bar - now what?
…
He settles down, and he finishes the joke; "... and then he walks into the table and then a chair!" … And he just bursts out laughing! … And so did we! That’s how I recorded it in my diary.
…
Yes, it's a silly joke. But telling a joke is a really human thing. Robots don’t tell jokes, at least not yet. But for an instant, it's as if we are all on "the same side". The uniforms, the orange suits, the security glass - for that moment, none of that mattered. For an instant, however deeply flawed, we were all just human beings.
This is a frequent theme in my prison diary. I felt such a deep sense of alienation that I looked anywhere and everywhere to get a sense of reconnection with the world, even if only through a silly joke. I'm quite sure I was not alone.