The things I learned in jail

I learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about others. I found that sometimes, the best way to figure out what’s going on, is to sit back and just observe. When I first went to county jail, this worked out well for me. I’d watch people do dumb stuff, they’d get yelled at for it and then put that in my memory to “not do that!”. Most stuff for the most part was common sense, although that’s not very common. I learned how to make food in unconventional ways, I believe I mentioned that before. I know that I don’t like people arguing constantly. I didn’t grow up that way, my husband I don’t argue like that, so it really got on my nerves. People talk to their tv’s. I don’t know why, and it’s not a once and done type thing. It’s like a play by play of whatever they are watching. I wanted to tell them that I don’t care what you’re watching, I’m trying to watch my own show We had to wear headphones, so this commentary made the headphones useless. They would use their headphones as speakers around their necks or have them so loud you could still hear the music. If that wasn’t bad enough, they would then sing out loud. Again, why have headphones at this point? If you aren’t someone who likes to prepare, you will learn this trait in jail. We had to prepare for count several times a day, prepare for meals, prepare or lights out, prepare for yard. It was also your job to check the call out every night to see what appointments you had the following day. If it was Friday, then you would check for the weekend and Monday. I don’t think it dawned on some of the people there that they were trying to make you more responsible and GROW UP! You learned that you had an area where you kept your stuff. It wasn’t all over the room, it was in your area. You shared certain spaces with others, therefore when you were finished, you cleaned up after yourself. People will come and hunt you down if you don’t. You need to learn to speak up for yourself. Otherwise, you will be walked on. You also needed to know when to keep your mouth shut. There were some that would love to just push your buttons to get a rise out of you. The Lord opened my eyes to all kinds of people because we’re told that we need to love everyone with the love of the Lord. It made me sad because after I started to look at people this way, I realized that someone else must have been treating them this way for them to feel that it was normal to do this to others. You wanted to just ask them, “who hurt you?” You can’t ask that though. Not unless you want to get socked in the nose. Occasionally someone would open up or you’d go to a group and people would share. I pray that the Lord continues to open my eyes to see everyone differently. Everyone is going through something. Be kinder the necessary.