Different People, Different Experience

Something was different this time. You didn't find allies and associates like you did during your first stint. Your mother and sisters had disowned you. None of the gang came to visit.

Gradually you turned inward, and you realized you didn't like what you saw. Before your father died when you were seven you had been idealistic, outgoing, and honest. You had wanted to grow up to be a cop. Now you were cooling your heals in a federal penitentiary and you had nothing to show for your life but a bunch of tattoos that only marked you as a criminal...

You started to keep to yourself. You read a lot of books from the prison library. Not just fiction either, you studied plumbing, electronics, home repair, wiring. You wrote to your mother and sisters once a week, telling them about the books you had read and the safer rumors you overheard in the chow hall.

Eventually they started to write back. Then in the seventh year of your stint they came for a visit on your birthday. You were overjoyed. You saw your nieces and nephews, some of them for the first time. You warned them all that you were a perfect example of how NOT to live your life. "Stay in school, avoid the gangs, and never get mixed up in ," that's what you told them in a nutshell.

More visits followed. For the next three years someone from the family came by almost every month, sometimes more. You helped keep your nephew Dushanbe from joining the Grove Street Irregulars; you showed him all your scars one by one and described in exhaustive detail how you got each and every one, but more importantly exactly how much those wounds had HURT, and how much some of the scars still hurt...