SQUASHED LIKE A POSSUM

The author of the following works in the Special Education section as a teacher's aide in the Education Department at Hamilton Correctional Institution in Jasper FL.  It was written for a GED/Vocational graduation, where the department head has a staff member say a few words. 

My hope has always been to reach those officers who stand on the line between C/Os and guards, those who can go one way or another depending on the things they are exposed to and how prepared they are to resist becoming a part of the wrongs surrounding them.

The thoughts expressed in this selection are so human and yet so much a part of the spirit that I believe they will hold special meaning at just the right moment to keep someone at the crossroad from being 'squashed like a possum', existing without ever finding their real purpose....

I believe many things.

I genuinely believe that each one of us is put here for a special purpose. We may never know what that special purpose is, but I also believe that we will not leave this earth until we accomplish that purpose, unless we do something foolish to thwart it. Let me explain. It is possible that a person can fill his body with mind-altering substances, step in front of a truck and be squashed like possum. That person’s special purpose will go undone. If that same person, however, darts in front of the same truck and gets squashed like a possum while saving the life of a child, that may have been the purpose for which he was put here. That child may well be the one who grows up and discovers a vaccine to prevent cancer.

I believe that the two best training lectures I ever had during my career as a correctional officer did not occur during the training course.

If you saw the movie "Con Air" with Nicholas Cage, you may recall a scene in an airport tower where the Cage character was being discussed. As you also may recall, that character was a former convict, going home on a Department of Corrections aircraft. During the conversation about his character, one of the actors said to another "You must remember. Not everyone who is in prison is an animal."

One evening I was walking around the dormitory in the Main Unit, the one that is now D dorm. One of the men who lived in the dorm was sitting on his bunk as I walked by and said to me "Lange, sometimes people forget that we have people out there who love us too." I never did find out why he said it, because we had not had a confrontation, we had not had harsh words with one another. That was all he said.

I have seen very little that is good happening in the daily life of an average inmate. When good things do happen, I believe that we should all vicariously derive a bit of pleasure from that good. I believe that it gives all of us hope for a better tomorrow. Some of the good things that I have seen many people may think are small things indeed, but I view them as events. A man gets transferred from an institution far from his home to one closer to his family and gets a visit for the first time in a year. Another man gets to go home, and his family is sitting in the parking lot waiting to pick him up, and they smile at me as I come in from the parking lot. A man gets a GED or a vocational certificate that he has had to struggle for, overcoming the dreary surroundings of a personal life where there is no privacy or quiet places to study. These are good things, and we should cherish each one.

I believe that we can find out many things about ourselves, as we grow older.

During the many years that we’ve been married, my wife and I have had numerous conversations about why I am the way that I am. These conversations have resulted in many changes in my attitude and behavior over the years, most of which being improvements over the person I used to be. We have explored many of my childhood memories, and have made several discoveries.

I recalled that as a very young boy, I would hum The Lord’s Prayer to myself as I tried to fall asleep at night, thinking that would ward off the nightly nightmares. It didn’t work, and we decided that may be part of the reason that I have never been a churchly person, somehow saying to myself that if a little boy could have nightmares even after The Lord’s Prayer, maybe there’s really nothing out there.

Many years later, about eight years ago, I was chatting with my older sister during a visit that ended a more than twenty five-year separation. My parents divorced when I was two, and shortly thereafter Mom remarried, and the four of us moved from Live Oak to Jacksonville, where my sister and I shared a bedroom in a tiny house. I was about six. During the chat with my sister, she told me that the reason she left to live with our natural father was because for about two years our stepfather was molesting her.

As I said, we shared the same bedroom. At the moment that we were having this chat, I remembered that in the dark I could see the glow of his cigarette, and then the humming would start, and then the nightmares.

Just a few weeks ago, I had another nightmare. In the dream my stepfather, who is now dead, appeared and said to me "I did you for two years and got away with it." Could it be that I repressed those memories all this time, knowing that we were both molested, subconsciously letting them control the way I dealt with life and the people I lived with? Perhaps.

I retired from my job as correctional officer at Hamilton in May of 2002, and was immediately hired by CCA in Columbia County. CCA is the private prison holding youthful offenders. While building my career in the Navy I was proud to be seen in my uniform in public. I was proud of myself, and the job that I did. During my career as a CO, I was not necessarily proud but I was not ashamed to be seen in public in uniform getting a bottle of milk or loaf of bread from a Jiffy store on the way home.

During my orientation class with CCA, the firearms instructor came in during the classroom phase of the weapons qualification and told the class that the state had decided not to pursue the case against the remaining five defendants in the Frank Valdes death. My classmates cheered. I went home that evening and packed my new uniforms. The next day I returned the uniforms and never went back. I took instead a job with Wal-Mart.

I was working in Wal-Mart one evening when a teacher with the Education Department at Hamilton came in. "Busy as a beaver Lewis" she said. She then told me about a spot as Teacher’s Aide at Hamilton, and told me to apply for it. I thought little more about it until several weeks later when my wife told me one Sunday evening that the department head had called while I was out and wanted me to call her. I did, and here I am.

I consider myself to be an extremely fortunate man. I have a wife who has stayed with me for 35 years, two nice daughters and a flock of pretty grandchildren, reasonably good health, and several of my own teeth. And now this!

I have never in my entire life worked around so many nice people as this group in the Education Department, people about whom I can find absolutely nothing bad to say. I believe that they were put here as a group for me to find. I believe that I was allowed to find them at a time when I must have needed them most. I believe that if being allowed to work with and around them, and possibly to help them in some small way, is to be my special purpose then I can now leave this earth satisfied.

I am aware that I have used the phrase "I believe" many times, but that is the theme of this outpouring so I offer no apology. I believe that I will stop now.

Another Anonymous Officer