A Walk Down memory Lane

Nothing much happened today, so I thought I might relate a story that took place a few years ago. It's somewhat amusing in that sort of "Eeew! Get that thing away from me!" way.

We got an inmate locked up from the 120 day drug treatment program. Not a rare occurrence. We get these guys sometimes. The judge will tell them if they can get through 120 days of this program, they can get out on probation and not have to do however many years of prison they are sentenced to. Sometimes it works............ sometimes not. Sometimes these guys come in from county and they are still detoxing off of whatever it was they were high on. They don't tend to last long in the "program". This was one such gentleman. They locked him up for "creating a disturbance" or some such thing. We tend to call it "Being stupid in a No-Stupid zone."

When they sent the guy down to us, we could see he was a little........off. But he wasn't out of control or anything, so we put him in a regular cell with another inmate. No sooner had I got back into the office from this little errand than the phone rings. It's another C.O. from over at the treatment house. He says "Hey, you know that inmate we just locked up? Well, it turns out he's not completely housebroken. We just went to pack up his property and found out he's been shi**ing in his footlocker!" And then he says "He's all yours! Good luck!" and hangs up the phone.

Snap.

Not many minutes after that there is a kind of desperate kicking at a door over in D-wing. It's the other inmate we put that guy in with. He says "Man! You gotta get this guy out of here! he's crazy!!!" I look in and the guys sitting on the other inmates bunk with his pants down around his ankles with one hand down inside his boxers......... just busy as hell.

Sooooooooooo............ we get him up and get him redressed and cuffed up and take him over to C-wing to be in a cell by himself. That turned out to be a good thing and a bad thing. Being by himself, he couldn't hurt anybody else. But I think being by himself helped make him a little more full-goose bozo. He degenerated rapidly. He refused to take his meds. He'd throw his food on the floor and roll on it like a dog with a dead squirrel. He'd splash all the water out of his toilet onto the floor and swim around for hours. He was a regular Michael Phelps in 1/16th of an inch of water.

But the worst was the hollering. He would holler words and phrases over and over for hours and hours on end. He was so crazy it was driving the crazy people crazy. His two favorite things were water and meds.

"WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER!"
"MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS!"
And occasionally he'd throw in the odd
"CHICKEN SANDWICH!"
And then back to
"WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER! WATER!"
"MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS! MEDS!"
And once in awhile
"SAINT LOUIS!!!!"
For freaking hours and hours on end.

For days.

He rarely slept. And neither did anyone else in the wing, I'm told. Even our craziest wobblyheadest knuckleheads that we were thinking of naming C-wing cells after were begging me to get out of the wing. "Please, C.O., please! Move me out of here and I'll become a priest and I'll dedicate my life to the poor and I'll never do anything wrong again! Just get me out of this freaking wing away from that nutcase!"

Some parts of it were kind of funny at the time. I know the man had some serious mental problems but Gawd! If we could have harnessed that it would have been the greatest reform tool ever invented for the penal system.

I hear he's doing much better now. He walks around the yard down in wobblehead land talking into his invisible cell phone by the hour. He cuts big money deals with all of the power brokers and spends alot of time on the phone with the white house. But he's behaving so we don't see him anymore.

To this day, tho, every time I hear someone say "chicken sandwich" I get the giggles.

Hee hee hee.......