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Old 04-11-2013, 01:36 AM   #2 (permalink)
P A N
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i live in canada. around the time of my 18th birthday, the laws concerning pot were all up in the air. some people thought it was totally legal. they were wrong of course. i didn't end up in jail because i thought it was legal. i ended up there because i got caught doing what lots of high school kids do, which is smoking weed on lunch break.

a month after my 18th birthday i was with two dudes who were a year younger than me puffin' away when our principal found us. to make an example of us he called the police. i can't remember much of what was said during our conversation with the police, but i knew there was going to be some court.

i had to tell my mom this of course. i was only living with her, and i was terrified, because at that point i didn't know how awesome my mom is. it was four days of increasing irritability and agitation coming from me before she asked me what was wrong. i knew i had to tell her so i sat her down and told her that i smoke pot and i got caught doing it at school and i might have to go to jail. i thought she was going to kick me out of the house. instead, she told me i should talk to my dad about it and that i would probably gain some insight into pot culture if i smoked some with him.

so anyway, the judge decided that she too wanted to make an example out of us and put us in jail. because of age, i was put in an adult, maximum security jail (jail is different from prison. jail is under two years, prison is more, and usually much bigger) while the other two dudes were put in juvenile centers with baseball diamonds, soccer fields, guitars and they got to wear their own clothes and smoke cigarettes. i was in a concrete "range" which had 6 cells with a bunk bed in each, bars everywhere, a communal tv constantly tuned to the rap channel due to a high percentage of wannabe thugs with white skin, a pay phone, about 8 really old western novels, and a bolted-to-the-floor picnic table made of steel which could only seat 8 people in a range which housed 12. there were 8 ranges in this facility.

we got about 20 minutes a day to go "outside". this was commonly referred to as "yard time." the yard was a concrete pad sized at about 50x50 feet. it had 25 foot walls around it and razor wire all around the top. since then they've put a net over top the whole thing to curb importing and exporting of cash and goods. i never figured out how they would time deliveries this way because we never knew when we were going to get yard time, and i figured it was best not to ask those types of questions. anyway, yard time was really weird. sometimes two ranges would get to join forces and there would be 24 men - all with a severe need to get laid - walking furiously in a circle. they were all bummed out when the guards said it was over, too.

i only got sentenced to a week, so i wasn't too concerned with getting through it or anything like that. it was almost more like a really weird excursion. i found it all very interesting and i was also safe. i knew two guys that were on my range when i got there. they were both skateboarders and i used to be one... where i lived then all the skaters knew each other. luckily, they were aggressive people who knew how to not get f*cked with. they both liked me and assured me i had nothing to worry about.

boredom is the killer in jail. people just don't know what to do with themselves and i think this is the reason people get in fights. my saving grace for this was this dude named Cave Man. he was the first person i noticed after my brief but warm welcome from the skaters. i noticed him because he was enormous, had a 2 foot beard and even longer hair of nearly the same texture as his beard (wildly frizzy), and half his face was blackened as though it had been beaten with a steel pipe. after watching him for a bit he seemed pretty gentle and sociable enough so at dinner i asked him what happened to his face. truth be told i was terrified of what might happen if i asked, but i figured if i'm going to go jail, getting my ass kicked by a dude aptly titled Cave Man would be good story material. turned out he really did get beaten with a steal pipe, and it had happened by a guy being charged with murder (i actually know that guy too. he's the brother of a guy who i've played some music with and they both grew up in the same area of the city as me... and he really was a murderer). apparently on the way out to yard, the murderer's range was coming back in, and somewhere in the halls he's located a pipe 2 inches in diameter and 1.5 feet long. i don't know what Cave Man did to him to deserve what he got, but it may very well have been less than what the murderer was intending.

anyway, Cave Man was very nice. he was the chillest dude on the range and i made a point of spending as much time with him as i could as it passed quicker than if i had to pay attention to anything else... or nothing else. he liked my insatiable curiosity and i liked his stories. he was an older guy. maybe 45 or 50. hung out with bikers and ran errands for them. he was a truck driver so he could haul guns and drugs. he showed me the newspaper clipping of when they busted him. there was a picture of crates with some serious-looking guns, ammo-boxes, and over 100 pounds of weed. he was real proud of that picture. he said that what i saw there was nothing compared to what he'd done in the past, and generations of his lineage would be taken care of due to just the right amount of extra space in the trailers of all those rigs over the years.

so that's the gist of it. i have a story about another guy who was absolutely insane and i will forever remember his rabid eyes, but i'll save that one for another time. i also can't remember all the details so i have to think about it.

suffice it to say, i'm glad i went to jail. it wasn't the longest week of my life or anything terribly dreadful, but it was just enough time to instill in me a sense that i don't want to go back.
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