Like all kids when growing up, I had all the answers, or so I thought, and all the adults were either slow or just darn crazy or mean and didn't want to see young people having fun.
Mommie use to tell me "a hard head makes a
soft behind". Never really caught on to that 'ole saying until one cool day in March, while confined at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution.You see I rarely went outside my CM (control management) cell for so-called "recreation" during the four years I was on that punitive status.
Recreation for those of us on CM status consisted of our being handcuffed and our legs shackled, then escorted to what is tantamount to several rows of oversized dog cages.
We were placed inside these dog cages just like they do at your animal control pound. There was nothing to do inside these dog cages except walk around in a circle for two hours, then return inside to our concrete graves.
So on this rare cool March day I was outside for "rec', when a guard came and told me I had a visit. I asked "are you sure"? The reason I asked this is because I had told my family years ago do not to ride all over the state to visit me.
The Florida Department of Corruption (FDOC) has a practice and policy of sending prisoners as far away from their families and friends as possible, thus isolating prisoners and placing greater strains on the maintenance of ties with the outside world.
When it was confirmed that I did indeed have visitors, my knees got weak and my mind started to spin. My walk to the visitation-pen was filled with fear. I knew that whoever was there to visit had come to bring me bad news (a visit to Santa Rosa C.I. for my family required them to stay overnight, because we lived clear across the state and this prison was just minutes from Alabama) and bad news was the last thing I needed after what the FDOC was taking me through.
Sure enough, when I got to the visitation-pen, and they locked me inside, my relatives told me to sit down they had something to tell me. I said "no", tell me what's up". They began to cry as they said "Mommie is dead".
At that moment, it was as if the world had stood still, silence, my head spinning, No, no, no, they didn't just say what I think they said. This can't be real, it must be a bad dream. But it wasn't. My biological mother and her sister were there telling me Mommie was gone, and the first thing came to mind was what Mommie use to tell me while sipping her coffee about "a hard head makes a soft behind".
She was right after all. Wish I'd had one last chance to tell her so.
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Sharif's Comments on "Up In Arms"
