Bruce - A Year Of Tuesday
Jul. 10th, 2022 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyBruce - A Year of Tuesday
[In which our host explains a few things, which may or may not have any resemblance to the author.]
I'd gotten nailed. Someplace I wasn't supposed to be, doing something I didn't care to explain. I hadn't been stealing but the officer had been kind enough to testalie on the police report that I'd had a TV set in my hands while I was crawling out the window.
As I was a juvenile, the Court didn't care if I was guilty or not guilty, nor did I have any rights to say, fight the charges.
Instead I was now on searchable probation. The probation officer had been pleasantly blunt.
"The world is your jail cell. Any time a cop so much as talks to you, you have to tell them you are on searchable probation. And they have the right to search you. Any time you don't feel like being searched, you can trade the world for a real jail cell, any time you like."
He thought he was threatening me.
I liked jail. Predictable and safer than home. But exposure to jail was cumulative and I did not want to go down that road, where being tough enough to get through life ended up in "Tough, kid, you're _doing_ life."
If I kept my nose clean until I turned 18, it would go away. If I didn't, I could have a record that would keep me out of most schools, most jobs, and all hope.
The stepmother, of course, was all about keeping everything on the down low. Not very well; she spent more time dealing with courts and cops than I did. She reminded me constantly that she could throw me out whenever she liked. Yet she didn't.
I have very few memories of my dad. All of them are bad.
If I try to think of him, I get this overwhelming feeling of heavy pressure on top of my back. And in my ass.
I'm guessing her memories of him were, if that, at least more than that, and perhaps even pleasant.
So yeah. Two and a half years of high school left to go, unless I took a GED test and got out early. Which wouldn't be prudent.
If life is a video arcade, I'm a pinball. Not a pinball machine, a pinball. I bounce off people and things. Sometimes I score. Often I get hit. Sometimes I go down the chute and wait to get banged again by the plunger. And spend a lot of time waiting in between quarters.
It would probably help if I could plan. I could kind of plan. I could make notes. But the plan tended to turn to shit when my head stopped working, which was incredibly often.
The probation officer had turned me over to a court counselor. That worthy soul had not even talked to me, only to my stepmother, and turned in a report to the Court that was pure fiction.
Again, no right to dispute.
When I'd immediately been referred to domestic violence counseling (I'd never laid a finger on her; the reverse was not true); anger management counseling (OK, that was fair), theft counseling (I'd gone to great lengths not to steal, including being beaten many times and injured at least twice)...
Suddenly an amended pre-sentencing report was filed that got me off the hook for all that. You see, my stepmother had money and would have had to pay for it.
So instead, I was referred to the 'free' option - a social worker.
She seemed fresh-faced and eager. Willing to be helpful.
I thought about it for a minute, asked if she was recording. She wasn't. So I spilled my guts, in that little cubicle room with seven other people BSing rookie social worker trainees in the other cubes. I just told her who I was and how it was.
After the second time she excused herself to throw up, she didn't come back.
I hadn't even gotten to the _good_ stuff.
###
Her supervisor was less willing to be helpful. She kept interrupting me, telling me that it couldn't have been like that.
"Look, ma'am, I was there and you weren't," I said finally, and ceased speaking.
Right to remain silent. It worked on cops.
It apparently didn't work here. Because my PSR now said "pathological liar, refusing to cooperate with counseling."
See, no right to contest or argue.
So the Judge banged his gavel and said, "Seven days, Juvenile Hall."
###
Things got kind of blurry after that.
###
When I could think again, I was in a concrete cell. I was wearing a orange jumpsuit. I had no personal belongings in the cell. There was not even toilet paper for the toilet with sink built into the top.
I was very thirsty, so I drank what water I could. Tried to get my bearings.
A paper plate covered in glop was slid under the gap in the door. No utensil.
It was all delicious. By which I intuited that it was my first meal for some time, days perhaps.
An endless time of hopelessly trying to remember the interim later, I heard.
"Turn around. Put your hands against the hatch in the door."
I was handcuffed through the door and walked to a room. Three people were in the room. Two deputies, one civilian.
It was a hearing of some kind. I have no idea what. They asked me questions. I gave the best answers I could, which wasn't much because I didn't really remember anything between Judge-gavel-7-days and eating off that paper plate in the isolation cell.
They had me sit on a bench outside the hearing room.
Through some trick of acoustics, I could hear them talking.
I'm pretty sure that was not intended.
But it saved my life.
###
"I'm very sorry," I said immediately when they walked me back in. "I panicked. I was scared."
I said these things because that was what they wanted to hear from me.
Now I was lying. But I was starting to blend in. Acculturating, I found out much later.
They knew I was lying. That's the hell of it. But their job was to break my defiance in juvie before someone broke my internal organs with a toothbrush shank.
###
I was back - back? - in GenPop. General Population.
Everyone gave me a wide, wide berth. My roommate was incredibly polite and respectful, as it is wise to do when one must share a tiny space with a scary person. I returned his courtesy scrupulously.
I mostly remember watching TV on the transparent set on a mount in the high corner of the cell. Cartoons and the Weather Channel.
The food was the same paper plates. But I was allowed a plastic spork now.
Four days later, they walked me to a cage, threw the dirty stinking clothes at me that I'd gone to Court in, and I walked home twelve miles for lack of $3 for a bus.
###
"Did you learn your lesson?" my stepmother sneered at the door.
My brain constructed three plans.
But I'd learned a new skill, in that hearing.
"Yes, ma'am," I said quietly. Listened to her rant. Nodded in all the right places. Abased myself. Lying to survive.
It still didn't get me any food that night.
That was OK, I'd eaten pretty good for a few days.
But it was a much better outcome than the three plans, which involved blunt objects, mixed chemicals and arson respectively. And murder, of course.
That would lead only to GenPop. For life.
###
My head still didn't work. But I was learning to roll. To spin. To always use what little I had to improve my situation, if not my sanity.
Can't wash your clothes because the garage is kept locked?
There's a sink. There's bar soap.
Need more bar soap? There's a dumpster behind the hotel, right?
Food?
Dude, I _invented_ DoorDash before smartphones were a thing. Go get food for people, eat off the round up and the portions people didn't want.
Learning to smile when I felt sick. To grin when I wanted to paint the world red. To joke when a rocket's main thruster would be cooler than my incandescent rage and furious anger.
One of the things I'd overheard in the can.
"Improvise, adapt, overcome."
It became my mantra. And like the three people in the hearing who didn't give a shit one way or another, it also saved my life.
A postcard came in the mail ten months later. I got it because I usually got home before the step-creature, and took any mail with my name on it.
"Congratulations on serving your probation," it read. Apparently I'd only gotten one year - not until I turned 18.
It didn't matter with the police. They still treated me like I was on searchable probation; that I wasn't was a mere detail, easily correctable, and I didn't want to call attention to it unless it really mattered.
But the fact of it mattered to me.
[In which our host explains a few things, which may or may not have any resemblance to the author.]
I'd gotten nailed. Someplace I wasn't supposed to be, doing something I didn't care to explain. I hadn't been stealing but the officer had been kind enough to testalie on the police report that I'd had a TV set in my hands while I was crawling out the window.
As I was a juvenile, the Court didn't care if I was guilty or not guilty, nor did I have any rights to say, fight the charges.
Instead I was now on searchable probation. The probation officer had been pleasantly blunt.
"The world is your jail cell. Any time a cop so much as talks to you, you have to tell them you are on searchable probation. And they have the right to search you. Any time you don't feel like being searched, you can trade the world for a real jail cell, any time you like."
He thought he was threatening me.
I liked jail. Predictable and safer than home. But exposure to jail was cumulative and I did not want to go down that road, where being tough enough to get through life ended up in "Tough, kid, you're _doing_ life."
If I kept my nose clean until I turned 18, it would go away. If I didn't, I could have a record that would keep me out of most schools, most jobs, and all hope.
The stepmother, of course, was all about keeping everything on the down low. Not very well; she spent more time dealing with courts and cops than I did. She reminded me constantly that she could throw me out whenever she liked. Yet she didn't.
I have very few memories of my dad. All of them are bad.
If I try to think of him, I get this overwhelming feeling of heavy pressure on top of my back. And in my ass.
I'm guessing her memories of him were, if that, at least more than that, and perhaps even pleasant.
So yeah. Two and a half years of high school left to go, unless I took a GED test and got out early. Which wouldn't be prudent.
If life is a video arcade, I'm a pinball. Not a pinball machine, a pinball. I bounce off people and things. Sometimes I score. Often I get hit. Sometimes I go down the chute and wait to get banged again by the plunger. And spend a lot of time waiting in between quarters.
It would probably help if I could plan. I could kind of plan. I could make notes. But the plan tended to turn to shit when my head stopped working, which was incredibly often.
The probation officer had turned me over to a court counselor. That worthy soul had not even talked to me, only to my stepmother, and turned in a report to the Court that was pure fiction.
Again, no right to dispute.
When I'd immediately been referred to domestic violence counseling (I'd never laid a finger on her; the reverse was not true); anger management counseling (OK, that was fair), theft counseling (I'd gone to great lengths not to steal, including being beaten many times and injured at least twice)...
Suddenly an amended pre-sentencing report was filed that got me off the hook for all that. You see, my stepmother had money and would have had to pay for it.
So instead, I was referred to the 'free' option - a social worker.
She seemed fresh-faced and eager. Willing to be helpful.
I thought about it for a minute, asked if she was recording. She wasn't. So I spilled my guts, in that little cubicle room with seven other people BSing rookie social worker trainees in the other cubes. I just told her who I was and how it was.
After the second time she excused herself to throw up, she didn't come back.
I hadn't even gotten to the _good_ stuff.
###
Her supervisor was less willing to be helpful. She kept interrupting me, telling me that it couldn't have been like that.
"Look, ma'am, I was there and you weren't," I said finally, and ceased speaking.
Right to remain silent. It worked on cops.
It apparently didn't work here. Because my PSR now said "pathological liar, refusing to cooperate with counseling."
See, no right to contest or argue.
So the Judge banged his gavel and said, "Seven days, Juvenile Hall."
###
Things got kind of blurry after that.
###
When I could think again, I was in a concrete cell. I was wearing a orange jumpsuit. I had no personal belongings in the cell. There was not even toilet paper for the toilet with sink built into the top.
I was very thirsty, so I drank what water I could. Tried to get my bearings.
A paper plate covered in glop was slid under the gap in the door. No utensil.
It was all delicious. By which I intuited that it was my first meal for some time, days perhaps.
An endless time of hopelessly trying to remember the interim later, I heard.
"Turn around. Put your hands against the hatch in the door."
I was handcuffed through the door and walked to a room. Three people were in the room. Two deputies, one civilian.
It was a hearing of some kind. I have no idea what. They asked me questions. I gave the best answers I could, which wasn't much because I didn't really remember anything between Judge-gavel-7-days and eating off that paper plate in the isolation cell.
They had me sit on a bench outside the hearing room.
Through some trick of acoustics, I could hear them talking.
I'm pretty sure that was not intended.
But it saved my life.
###
"I'm very sorry," I said immediately when they walked me back in. "I panicked. I was scared."
I said these things because that was what they wanted to hear from me.
Now I was lying. But I was starting to blend in. Acculturating, I found out much later.
They knew I was lying. That's the hell of it. But their job was to break my defiance in juvie before someone broke my internal organs with a toothbrush shank.
###
I was back - back? - in GenPop. General Population.
Everyone gave me a wide, wide berth. My roommate was incredibly polite and respectful, as it is wise to do when one must share a tiny space with a scary person. I returned his courtesy scrupulously.
I mostly remember watching TV on the transparent set on a mount in the high corner of the cell. Cartoons and the Weather Channel.
The food was the same paper plates. But I was allowed a plastic spork now.
Four days later, they walked me to a cage, threw the dirty stinking clothes at me that I'd gone to Court in, and I walked home twelve miles for lack of $3 for a bus.
###
"Did you learn your lesson?" my stepmother sneered at the door.
My brain constructed three plans.
But I'd learned a new skill, in that hearing.
"Yes, ma'am," I said quietly. Listened to her rant. Nodded in all the right places. Abased myself. Lying to survive.
It still didn't get me any food that night.
That was OK, I'd eaten pretty good for a few days.
But it was a much better outcome than the three plans, which involved blunt objects, mixed chemicals and arson respectively. And murder, of course.
That would lead only to GenPop. For life.
###
My head still didn't work. But I was learning to roll. To spin. To always use what little I had to improve my situation, if not my sanity.
Can't wash your clothes because the garage is kept locked?
There's a sink. There's bar soap.
Need more bar soap? There's a dumpster behind the hotel, right?
Food?
Dude, I _invented_ DoorDash before smartphones were a thing. Go get food for people, eat off the round up and the portions people didn't want.
Learning to smile when I felt sick. To grin when I wanted to paint the world red. To joke when a rocket's main thruster would be cooler than my incandescent rage and furious anger.
One of the things I'd overheard in the can.
"Improvise, adapt, overcome."
It became my mantra. And like the three people in the hearing who didn't give a shit one way or another, it also saved my life.
A postcard came in the mail ten months later. I got it because I usually got home before the step-creature, and took any mail with my name on it.
"Congratulations on serving your probation," it read. Apparently I'd only gotten one year - not until I turned 18.
It didn't matter with the police. They still treated me like I was on searchable probation; that I wasn't was a mere detail, easily correctable, and I didn't want to call attention to it unless it really mattered.
But the fact of it mattered to me.
