Life in the Lockdown. Oh, yeah. I'm bad.

Disclaimer: This will be really boring for you guys who work with me. I won't be offended if you skip it. But then again, I might mention you. That would be cool, wouldn't it?

As most of you know, I work in prison. A real one. With double razor-wire fences and armed officers and inmates and everything. And somedays, I realize that it's a weird job. A good job, one that I am grateful for, but weird. And it takes some getting used to.

I did get used to hearing steel doors slam shut behind me every morning and locking up my pencils every night, but I'll never get used to grown men asking me permission to use the restroom. I don't have pictures of my kids at work for obvious reasons, but the men show me pictures of theirs, and I'll never get used to that grief I feel for these kids I'll never meet.

When you work in prison, you learn to watch for details. For instance, your chapstick. Susan, another teacher who teaches with me there, once had her new tube of chapstick stolen right out of her desk. She didn't think much about it, until a couple of days later she reached in her desk and realized it hadn't been stolen, only borrowed for a few days. Yes. That's right. It had just been borrowed and thoughtfully returned, slightly used. Now, that might not be a big deal where you work--but in prison, it is. Fortunately they pay us enough to be able to afford more chapstick.

Sometimes working in prison makes you a little scared. Like the time the power went off, and the emergency lights didn't kick on, and I was alone in the building in the dark with 22 convicted felons. But most of the time, working in prison leaves you stark, raving, screaming bored. The day-after-day routine, routine, routine, and the bleak decor can get to you after a while. That's why Clark, another teacher, keeps an amazingly realistic wooden snake in his drawer.

One benefit of working in prison is that I can now amaze family and friends with my mad ghetto skills. I'm saying, I can throw that math down, dawg. Me and my roadies, we got the exponents goin' on all up in here. Keep it real, home-skillet. Fo shizzle.

And of course, you meet the most interesting people. I had one student who was raised Amish. That's right. Suspender-wearing, barn-raising, Amish. I asked him how, how, how did he end up in prison? His answer:

"Ma'am, I should never have gone to town."

And there was the kid who left letters for Susan and me every morning. I can't remember what Susan's said, but mine always started out "Good Morning, Mighty Woman of Valor! Be of great courage, for the Lord God of Hosts art with thee." OK, how many of you have a greeting like that on your desk every morning?

I've seen men line up chalk dust and pretend to snort it, or roll up "play joints" using notebook paper and pencil sharpener shavings. I've been told "Mrs. M., I say no to drugs. They just don't listen." And "I'm going to start my own church. We're gonna be the Crystal Methodists."

And here's today's story: Two of my students were at my desk, waiting for me to give them some paper, when one thought it would be silly to grab my address stamp and stamp the other one on the back of his hand. Inmate H, hollered, "Mrs. M! Did you see that? Did you see what he did to me? He made a mark on me! It might be permanent! What if it doesn't come off?" Then he stopped himself as the whole class burst out laughing. Inmate H is tattooed on about 89% of his visible skin, and I don't wanna know how much else. He looked sheepish. "I guess that's kinda dumb, huh?"

Kinda, yeah. But I wasn't going to tell him that.