By D. Razor Babb
We returned to chow hall feeding at Mule Creek. Once again walking to the inmate dining room twice a day, breakfast and dinner, 7 days a week in any kind of weather. We’d become accustomed to the convenience of trays being delivered to the housing units, one of the few positives resulting from the COVID pandemic beginning over two years ago.
Few missed the daily drudge of hoofing it to the chow hall, standing in line, the close confines of the tightly packed assemblage, grabbing a tray & jostling for a seat at a 4-man table.
There’s nothing quite like the experience of sharing a meal first thing in the morning with someone who is completely devoid of even nominal table manners. Is there any acceptable way to point out to a tablemate with a mouth full of watery powdered eggs and fetid chunks of what is listed as “turkey ham” (which neither resembles nor can possibly contain anything remotely turkeyish or ham-like) that it’s just plain disgusting to try and carry on a conversation with your mouth full?
First day back, not 2 seconds since passing through the entry way, an ear drum shattering yell from the guy directly behind me, greeting a fellow diner all the way across the room. This ignites a flood of cortisol, from the limbic area of the brain. For that split second, a flash of rage, sparked from some long-forgotten trauma overwhelms the usually calm balance between stimulus and response. Reason is momentarily hijacked by emotional fury. Just as quickly, a reemergence of reason as sympathetic rationalization returns. My comrade in line is happy to see an old acquaintance. The close proximity of his mouth and my ear is not his primary concern.
The emotional intelligence, anger management, CBT, AA, insight training, coping skills and triggers training, therapy sessions with a trained psychologist, and group participation may be starting to sink in. (Conclusion in next text)
In the crowded din, calamity, and cacophony of the chow hall, an itinerant thought beckons…a Chrissie Hinds melody drones on the scratched vinyl of a short-circuited memory bank in a dark, forgotten corner of the attic of my mind…”Oh, oh, oh, we’re back on the chain gang.”
Razor Babb is incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison
