By Just A Guy
This morning, as the officers prepared paper trays with cold, soggy pancakes from a serving cart outside of my cell, I overheard a female officer chatting with a fellow officer. She was telling him that she had visited various historical sites, like the book depository in Dallas and the site of the Oklahoma City bombing, and that going to these places made her very emotional, so much so that when she was visiting Oahu she refused to visit the site of the U.S.S. Arizona because of the feelings such a visit would engender in her.
When I heard this, I couldn’t help but laugh at what she’d said as I considered where she works from the confines of my graffiti-scrawled 6-by-9 cell in which the view of the outside world through the 6-inch-by-4-foot window has been purposefully obstructed except for about half an inch along the edges.
A short while later this same officer was going from cell to cell picking up trash. When she arrived at my cell, she asked me if I was new. I asked her why. Was it obvious, because I had no personal property to speak of? She said no, that it was my mood—which probably wasn’t chipper. I then asked her if I might ask a question and told her that I’d overheard her discussion with respect to visiting tragic historical sites and was curious to know if she was aware of the irony of getting emotional at such sights, when going to work in a prison, specifically the “hole” in a prison, didn’t get her emotional.
Her answer, to me anyway, was a sad and tragic condemnation of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation system, and quite frankly, of society’s outlook on things as a whole. Also, her answer was quite disturbing—this I’ll explain further as I go on.
What she said to me is that she “detaches” herself when she comes to work. She then said that when talking to fellow officers, she can be herself, but then motioned toward me and said that when she’s dealing with us, meaning inmates, she detaches.