Like, Really?

Sometimes when you are living a reality, you forget how strange it may appear to people outside that reality or even how odd it initially appeared to you when you first saw the behavior until it became normal to you as well. Let's consider fads like wearing leg warmers, crocs, even women working outside the home. 

In prison, there are many of those moments - they have softball teams here? People play pool in the rec? There's a nicely paved outdoor walking path? They have like 100 aerobic videos and only three television we can use to watch them on? If I want to keep Kosher, I better love sardines? A salad bar consists of iceberg lettuce? My 7am call out to see a doctor may result in my seeing the doctor at 3:30pm? I'm in a medical facility and have bad legs, but I have to stand for two hours twice a day to get my pain medications? I am not allowed to touch another inmates nor communicate with them post incarceration, but I can take a amateur picture with them in front of a professional backdrop that I can keep forever?

It's the last one that came up today. We have out of town guests and we were talking a little about my experiences down in Texas. Somehow the subject of pictures came up, so I decided to share the pictures I have of me with fellow inmate friends. The first thing our company said was, "they had a backdrop?!?!?" She was so shocked! Of course this surprised her. She hasn't seen it on Orange is the new Black yet...

I sometimes think that if they actually showed true reality on OITNB, people would say it was too made up. That's the thing about reality. It's often stranger than fiction. OITNB is loosely based on Kerman's experience, but by this point, loosely is an understatement. She was at a camp, OITNB is an FCI (closer to was Carswell is like). That's okay though, OITNB's TV show's intentions is to entertain, and that it does. 

The truth is that very little in prison is entertaining except those moments when the sarcastic part of you can look around and go, "really?!?!" I still laugh at some of the inconsistencies and insanity. One thing that made me laugh was our niece today, reminding me that it's not quite expected that at prison, we would be allowed to purchase tickets to take pics with our fellow felon friends in front of a fancy backdrop.