This week’s chosen prison object is one of my own.
Life Through Prison Objects
Food
For almost a week I had eaten nothing. A cocktail of fear and shame had turned my stomach in knots. But I had started to become a little more accustomed to prison. Today I was hungry.
I joined the diet queue and waited my turn, shuffling forward a few inches each every minute or so. I had never been a fussy eater and even though I did not have high expectations for what awaited me I was still disappointed when it came.
When my turn came the officer on duty gave me the quick up and down with his eyes before declaring “Default!”.
The prisoner behind the servery finished wiping his nose along the length of his forearm and then deposited a salad sandwich on my plate. Of the white bread, limp lettuce and ‘I do believe it’s not butter’, the last was the thickest component and its application had torn the bread so severely that the whole affair had been turned into a clumsy bagel type of affair.
One might have thought that the officer felt sorry for me as he explained:
“If you don’t fill in a diet sheet you go on default. That is always the Vegan / Halal / Kosher option. Come see me after diets and I’ll get you a sheet.”
So I did just that. There were diets served at lunchtime and an evening meal. There were 5 options for each meal, I focused on what I could choose for that evening. I scanned through the list and was both shocked and delighted – Spicy Chicken Noodles! Oh hell yes! I ticked through the rest of the options and rushed off to hand in my list.
That evening I joined the dinner queue. My hunger levels were off the charts. As I anticipated my meal I was salivating like Pavlov’s dog. After a tortuously long wait it was my turn. The officer gave me the ‘up & down’ again and consulted his list.
“Spicy Chicken Noodles!” he declared. I beamed. I had to stop myself yelling in triumph. I presented my plastic plate to the snot-wiper and he responded by presenting me with a packet of Kolee dried noodles. There was no accompaniment, not even irony.
God how I wished for another salad sandwich.
