Yesterday I moved out of my old cell in to a situation that is an improvement but not by much. My cellmate isn't bad: he just talks nonstop, keeping me up to all odd hours of the night when I have to get for work fairly early. The main problem is that I share the dorm with the guy who stole a book of none then tried to fight me last year. Yeah, non other than Ereman is in my new dorm.
Because of his toxic attitude I have avoided Ereman as much as possible and will continue doing so until I move out of this dorm. Yes, I'm trying to move again. It was stupid of the administration to put us in the same dorm and I don't mind telling them as much. I'm going to try to have a say in it this time. I only have a few months left before I leave on parole and just want a place to do the rest of my time in peace. Sounds silly, I know. This is prison; get over it.
Really, you would be surprised at how different each dorm is. Some are deathly quiet, while others are as raucous as a NASCAR race. I have the benefit of knowing which dorms are which due to my many book cart runs. Hopefully, my pleas for a move will fall on compassionate ears.
My legacy of being a target for stupid cases continues.
We came off lockdown yesterday evening, so West and I decided to run book cart today to give people a chance to read while we did inventory. It's not a big deal that our book cart books are out because most of them ate doubles or cast-offs anyway. West also had the crazy idea to do the whole 100-man unit in one day. Now, these are guys who just came off lockdown, hungry for new reading material while the library is still closed. Book cart was busy and that is an understatement.
We started the book cart at 8:30 am and didn't finish until about 7 pm after the 6:30 shift change. It took a while to find someone to open the library for us to return the carts because the night shift isn't accustomed to the library workers being out on their sift. The lieutenant finally let us in.
As I was coming out, I pulled an envelope from under my clipboard with some poetry from a friend, grabbed my book, and headed out.
"Hold on a sec," called the lieutenant, "Lemme see that envelope."
After I handed him the envelope, he stated, "This doesn't have your name or number on it. It's contraband."
"Alright, you can have it," I conceded, "I don't mind."
"No, you follow me. You'll get confiscation papers and a case."
"Really? For an envelope? I do this every weekend."
"Not this one you don't."
When we reached his office, he filled out maybe half the paperwork before handing me off to the sergeant.
"What's that?" asked the sergeant, eying my book.
"A book. I read while I do book cart. Every weekend."
"Lemme see it."
I handed it over.
"No name or number. It's contraband. I'm confiscating this, too."
"Are you serious? I do the same thing every weekend without any trouble. The only difference is that I don't have to deal with this shift."
"Well, tonight you do," the sergeant sneered.
Now I have two bogus cases to deal with at the same time. Wonderful. What will they come up with next?
This was the last day (hopefully) that I did the book cart without Ereman. I've had to leave the morning church service two weeks in a row now because of the book cart, and I'm hoping not to need to do it again. I thought I was finished before lunch but was proven wrong later in the day.
The afternoon was filled with a pleasant visit from the younger of my two friends. This was the first time I had a visit with Betsy on her own and, just like before, it was like hanging out with an old friend.
On the way out of the visit, I was told that an officer at another dorm was looking for me. Hmmm, that's strange, I thought. Why would a guard from the other side of the unit want to see me? When I arrived at the dorm the officer showed me a spine tag from one of the book cart books.
"Can you find out which book this is so I can look for it? It seems like someone is trying to steal from the book cart."
Oh yeah, I can find out which book it is. I work hard to make a quality book cart for the guys and someone wants to steal from it. I got back into the library and looked up the number of the book in our paperwork. I even found the name of the guy who checked out the book to make sure he knew someone was trying to make off with his book and get him into trouble. Only a few minutes later I returned to the officer with the info I had dug up. It felt kind of like a detective mission. I don't know if the book was found yet but at least I did what I could, considering the circumstances. I really don't like people who ruin a good thing for others, especially when I put effort into making the good thing better.
