CAPTURED WITH WORDS

Maybe the camera’s inoperable—not the one here capturing this moment in time—no, the all-knowing camera encapsulated in an overturned black-tinted half-shell, its eye a direct conduit to the correctional facility's central nervous system, otherwise known as The Control Center.

When I first started teaching inmates some twenty years ago they settled their differences on the prison yard. Not any more. I step into the hallway and remind the dozen or so young convicts engaged in their ritualistic verbal-sparring-dance that Big Brother is watching. I’m in the eye of the impending storm. I point to the ceiling, “You’re on camera,” I say. “You’re being recorded.”

I hear someone say, “Well he shouldn’t have spit on me.” I can feel the slow build up of thunder.  The wind-millers are edgy, their turbines wound tight. I know enough to retreat back to my classroom, back to where I can protect my teeth. I certainly don’t care about them, kill each other if you must.

Then it happens.

The unthinkable.

Some lame-ass prisoner grabs a chair from my room and returns to the hallway.

I’m more concerned about what “the all-knowing eye” records and have already formulated the investigator’s first question: “Why was one of your classroom chairs in the hallway?”  And depending on the severity of punishment meted from said chair, “Who swung the chair at so-and-so’s head knocking him unconscious?”

Little did I know that “the eye”  must’ve had a cataract. The only way to disperse the crowd of punks was to go back into the hallway and positively identify them. “Give me your ID card,” I ordered one of the main instigators. Soon the little dust-mites scattered to the wind; soon the corrections officers arrived. I heard nothing more about this incident. I guess there wasn’t anything to review.

Next: Commentary on “The Marriage Plot” (I promise); should be good.