Doing Time

Yeah, I've been to jail.

Okay, okay, I worked in a jail.

But, trust me, that year felt a lot like a sentence.

My task was to test the reading levels of various convicts, such that they could take classes and turn their lives around. However, the difficult part of the job was not the assessments —

it was keeping track of every single pencil and paper clip.

Death by office supplies is never pretty, after all.

But other than the time an inmate insisted that I smuggle him out when I left the joint that afternoon (Not on my watch, Partner.), jail time was pretty uneventful.

Not so, these days.

In August, our local jail saw some serious action when a guy wrapped a baggie of Aunt Mary around an arrow and fired it at the second-floor recreation area.

When questioned, Robin “Hood” claimed he was aiming at a squirrel.

"He had no explanation as to why squirrel hunting requires attaching marijuana to an arrow," said the local sheriff.

Hmmmm.

Then last week in Brazil, a woman attempted to smuggle a cell phone to her inmate boyfriend.

It may have worked too, except for the fact that the pigeon it was strapped to landed in front of the patrolling guard.

I wonder if the pigeon was arrested for aiding and abetting.

Gives a whole new meaning to the word jailbird, don’t you think?

PROMPT: Spend some time in the pen with your pen today. Perhaps you have an incarceration story of your own… ahem… or maybe you’d just like to take on the perspective of any of the characters mentioned above — unlucky inmate, desperate girlfriend, guilty pigeon… or the “high” flying squirrel.