Spoons (#45)

I recently had a “remember you are in prison” experience. I thought it was worth sharing. This past weekend I got up at 6 am to go to breakfast. One thing about prison that is as close to constant and reliable as you can get is the menu. Every Saturday morning we have corn flakes and coffee cake. If we ever get a different cereal, I am ecstatic. On occasion we do, but that is not the point of this blog. I digress.

The chow hall is also somewhat consistent in terms of what to expect and the procedures for getting food and eating. The chow hall is very similar to a cafeteria. It reminds me of the chow halls in college. Meals are served at certain times of the day. You almost always stand in a line for 15 minutes. When you get to the serving counter you get your tray and plastic wear. The servers are assigned 1 item and put it on your tray. At the end of the line you take a cup and fill it with your beverage. Even the choice of beverage is consistent meal to meal.

On Saturday morning there was a change in the chow hall routine. At the point where we get our plastic wear, we only had spoons. Typically, there are two rows of utensils with forks on the top row and spoons on the bottom. However, the utensils are placed in the dispensers with only the handle showing, so you do not see whether the utensil you are grabbing is a fork or spoon until you pick it out. You go by routine. Spoons on top, forks on bottom. It’s generally not an issue, unless you our out of a certain utensil. On Saturday morning, the fork row was empty. We only had a choice of spoons. I didn’t think a whole lot about it other than it was weird eating coffee cake with a spoon.

At lunch when I arrived at the utensil dispenser there were the two rows of utensils. Naturally, I thought that the forks would be on top and the spoons on the bottom. To my surprise, both rows were spoons. I couldn’t put the spoon back; that’s a prison rule. Once you touch a tray or a utensil, it’s yours. So, I had two spoons at lunch.

A few seconds after grabbing my second spoon, the guard that overseas the kitchen (yes, there is a guard for this – because the kitchen is a great place to steal food and spices to trade) tell another inmate that he only needed one spoon. As I grabbed my cup and passed the guard she told me, “you don’t need two spoons.” I tried to explain the situation. “Yes, but I had already touched the second spoon. I couldn’t put it back after I had touched it.” That seemed to hit a nerve with her. She got angry and retorted, “What? You think I don’t know that?” I replied meekly, “No, I was simply saying that I had no choice once I took that second spoon. There was nothing I could do.” (Inmates often complain about the dehumanizing aspect of prison. When dealing with guards who neither care to learn the facts, or treat the inmates as beneath them, I’m not amazed to hear about inmate violence at higher security prisons).

That evening at dinner I didn’t take any chances. I only took a spoon. By that time the rumor had spread that we weren’t’ given forks because inmates were either stealing them, or throwing them away. The same guard that lectured me about my excessive spoon issue at lunch was back at dinner. I overheard another inmate ask her when we would get forks back. She replied, “You can buy forks at the commissary,” as if to imply that we should buy them and bring in our own forks if we want to use such a utensil. This was odd because it’s against policy for an inmate to bring anything to a meal except one condiment. We are not allowed to bring our own cups to the chow hall. It’s always humorous (frustratingly so) when a guard tells you to do something that is against policy. Needless to say it was difficult to eat my salad and chicken patty with a spoon. I was late for my softball game because of it.

Epilogue: On Monday morning we had forks again. I have not seen the fork Nazi guard, but she will be back this weekend. We might be deprived of forks for all of our weekend meals.

Other interesting things:

For those of you who don’t know, we get counted, literally, physically counted by the guards, multiple times each day. The two main counts, also called standing counts because we have to stand, and several counts during the middle of the night. I don’t understand these. We can’t go outside because the door is locked. Why bother counting? Anyway, the other day a guard announces over the camp PA system to put our chairs in our cubicles. The guards were going to count our chairs. Oddly our chairs have to be in our cubes on Fri. morning as it is at the 8 am weekly inspection. Why not count the chairs then? Oh well, that’s someone else’s problem.

Jeff