GENIUS INMATES in Adventures From Prison

Yesterday, I was asked by a library patron for photos of Michelangelo’s Sixteenth Chapel. So while the prison is getting more and more crowded its overall average intelligence has remained the same. We’ve definitely gotten an influx of weirdos. Most of them are coming to us from the medium security prison in Marion, Illinois. For some reason they have been sending busload after busload of misfits. In my experience most of the geeks and nerds I’ve crossed paths with are at least intelligent, but these guys not-so-much.
They sure do LOVE our library though. Every single day, regardless of whether we are filled to and above capacity. We have 35 chairs and every day at 11:30 a.m. when we re-open after lunch there is a mad scramble for seats. Those too slow, instead of leaving, choose to spend the next hour at our counter trying to have awkward conversations with us:
“Can I see the Men’s Health magazine” one asks me.
“Sure” I said and hand him the magazine.
He takes a look at the cover and seriously begins to titter like a school girl. He holds it up for me to see. “It’s the Rock.” He tells me pointing at the cover. “I love the Rock. Of all of the wrestlers in the world that ever was he is my absolute favorite EV-ER.” The he looks at me like I’m supposed to agree with him. I try not to be mean.
“I don’t watch wrestling,” I said.
“Well you should, because the Rock is just the BEST!”
He takes his magazine further down the counter and I walk up to my friend Jay. “Did you hear that guy?”
“You got off lucky,” he said. “Yesterday, I had to listen to him critique all six Star Wars movies. He thinks Jar-Jar Binks got a bum rap.”
Then there is a guy who keeps asking for books with titles like
“No, Daddy, Don’t; Out Little Secret and By the Lake of Sleeping Children.”
When I told him that our library chooses not to carry books that depict child abuse and exploitation he looked at me with a shocked and affronted glare.
“Why would you think I want books like that?”
“You just asked for three of them.” I deadpan.
“Oh is that what they are?” he said with fake surprise.
“Yeah.”
“Oh well,” he looks at his list. “Then do you have “Three Boys Missing?”
On top of these guys, the gay community has decided to come in force each evening. Now I have no issue with gay men, their bedroom preferences have no bearing or interest to me. The same goes for heterosexuals and because of my current residency, pedophiles. To me these are topics only for intimate friends in private situations – not in the middle of the prison library. But this particular group makes it impossible to ignore. Seriously, there are so many flames dancing around I’m shocked our books haven’t ignited.
So the other night, the Supervisor of Education was working an overnight shift as duty officer and she stopped by the library on her walk through. As a very conservative Irish woman, this bonfire did not please her. In general the BOP frowns on homosexuality for obvious reasons and everyone knows it, so what happened next should have been no surprise to anyone.
The supervisor flicked the lights to get everyone’s attention then loudly announced that the library was not a hook up place and that this was not Date Night. The gay men all stopped and stared at her. A few stopped holding hands and making goo-goo eyes with one another. The SOE left and of course the gays got angry. How dare she speak to them like that?
Really?
I just don’t understand it when individuals are caught red-handed then get angry at the person who caught them. I run into this mentality all of the time in here but it never ceases to amaze and amuse me.
There are hundreds of guys here who were caught with their hand in the cookie jar who feel that the justice system is evil because the prosecutor forgot to dot an “i” and the judge won’t let them go because of it.
That is seriously the strongest point of most appeals, not that they are innocent but because someone misspoke or filed a form a day late. Then they are surprised and furious when the appeal court turns them down. It’s the government’s fault they are forced to serve 10 years not the fact they were caught holding a bag of drugs the size of a German shepherd!
These are the same guys, however, who are convinced that they have uncovered government conspiracies and know all the secrets needed to beat the odds and become billionaires playing the stock market. Who knows maybe they are geniuses and we educated folk willing to take responsibility for our actions are the fools?