THE APPLIANCE SALESPERSON

All roles are dangerous. The world tends to trap you in the roles you play, and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.

—James Baldwin

I am just a convict-teacher; nothing more, nothing less. I am placed several rungs below the appliance salesperson who flits about, trying to stir the pot, deflecting any and all deficiencies into the wind. “Look over there,” the appliance salesperson might say, his feet propped up on his desk where the phone rings and rings and rings. So I look in whatever direction he’s pointing, a diversion from the “real” problem: the appliance salesperson.

I am just a convict-teacher. My new school computer, the one that I was supposed to get many many moons ago, never went past the appliance salesperson’s desk. Toss the convict-teacher a bone, give him the old computer that the appliance salesperson almost fried with a space heater; the convict-teacher will be eternally grateful regardless.

The convict-teacher, unlike the appliance salesperson, is the equivalent of a mushroom. Shovel shit his way and keep him in the dark. But here’s the real irony: The convict-teacher will continue to grow. As long as the convict-teacher is not a poisonous mushroom, the appliance salesperson will feel comfortable with this arrangement.

But the convict-teacher has learned patience. He waits and observes each and every impropriety. The appliance salesperson brags about a washer and dryer he sold to a man—but not just any man—the former boss of a prisoner at our facility.

“I’ve got his business card,” the appliance salesperson says. He shows it to me “He owns his own company.” He tells me how this guy is going to visit his former employee / prisoner / friend. I think to myself, why did he bring this business card inside the prison? Is he the conduit, the messenger for something?

Earlier this week our judicial system tried to determine whether this boss, this purchaser of a washer & dryer, should bare some  of the responsibility for dismissing his employee from work early one day, whether this boss had known his employee was drunk at the time. This convict-teacher does not know all the details, nor has he met this prisoner’s former boss. What he does know is that a mother and her two sons died one fateful day when a man plowed into their car. What he does know is that the appliance salesperson is a stones throw away from the prisoner responsible for such a tragedy. So why help him and not your fellow coworker?

I am just a convict-teacher. This is my only job. What do I know?