No, But I stayed at Holiday Inn Express Once

You’ve seen the ad.  There is a dramatic moment where someone’s life or safety hangs in the balance – a snakebite, a shipwreck, in an operating room. Our hero suddenly steps forward. With calm and cool direction, the hero takes charge and offers precise instructions to resolve the crisis. “Are you a surgeon?” A thankful, awestruck crowd member asks. “No,” comes our hero’s reply. “But I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

            

The intent of the ad – besides humor – is to convey how intelligent and able you become after a night at the Holiday Inn Express. In a crisis, someone – it seems – always has the answer. And we’re quick to go along with that person because we assume he knows what he’s talking about. But what if he doesn’t? What if he’s full of it and just made the whole story up? That would be life in prison.

            

I am bombarded daily by guys that seek to impress me with their knowledge and life experiences. If I didn’t know any better, I would think every inmate doing a drug sentence was just like the infamous Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Every drug guy in here wants to have you think he was one brick shy of Jay Z. Forget the fact that Jay Z’s drug dealing days were not that profitable (his claim to fame – beating a drug stop on the Garden State Parkway on 4^th Amendment illegal search and seizure grounds occurred in an old, high mileage Nissan Maxima with the header peeling off the roof). No, Jay Z turned from low level drug dealing to Rap mogul the old fashioned way: He had an entrepreneurial idea and worked hard to make it come true.

            

The admen who brought you the Holiday Inn Express campaign can’t compete with the guys in here. Bullshit (pardon my language) is creative and artistic. The really strange thing is, most guys want you to think they are so smart, yet they buy almost any line thrown out. They are beyond gullible.

            

We recently had an inmate claim to be a thoracic surgeon. “Have you met the doctor yet Larry?” I was asked on a number of occasions. “Are you sure he’s a doctor,” I asked dozens of guys who were taking their medical records to him. “Of course he’s a doctor. We asked him and he told us all about medical school, and surgery, and his offices.”

            

The “doctor” was transferred last week but not before a little internet search by someone on the street confirmed he was an LPN who was locked up on a sex charge. “I knew he wasn’t no doctor,” was heard all over the compound from the very same guys who weeks earlier had bought into his story. Gullibility is alive and well inside the walls.

            

There are always one or two charlatans who hang out in the law library and convince men so desperate to get out that they’ll pay practically anything for a chance at freedom. The stories are always the same: your defense attorney screwed up – or worse, sold you out; the judge and the commonwealth attorney made a deal; there was no evidence to convict. And the self-described Clarence Darrow’s tell you they just got a guy off death row, or another guy released due to a “technicality,” and they have an old English writ that’ll work; “just give me $50,” they say.

           

I’m asked if it’s true and I tell them no, the law doesn’t work that way. “But he said,” I’ll hear and I’ll respond, “He doesn’t know the law. He doesn’t know the truth.”

            

Guys in here crave being in “the know.” They want the fictions to be fact. “The Governor just brought back 65%!” (Good-time earning so you only serve 65%, not 85%). And I explain that the Governor can’t bring back something that never existed (Virginia never had 65%; parole-abolished in 1995 – wasn’t on a 65% scale). Nor can the Governor arbitrarily, in the middle of August, change the Virginia Code. That’s not how laws are made in the Commonwealth.

            

One of the main driving forces in prison and a chief cause of the tremendous rate of recidivism after release is ignorance. Men in here know so little about so much. They lack basic skills in reading comprehension, math, science, history, and geography. That is a dangerous thing because an inability to discern truth from bullshit is at the heart of most crazy prison stories. It’s more important in here for a guy to say he drove a Bentley – even though he lacks basic education, has obvious health issues, and never made more than minimum wage – than to say he owned a 1980s Corolla and is back to prison for a third bid for dealing eight balls of crack in the projects.

            

Discerning the truth: I spend a fair amount of time each morning reading the Psalms and Proverbs. Over and over they speak about knowledge, truth, and wisdom. Can you cut the wheat from the chaff? Can you see through the racial ignorance peddled by Black and White alike in here to deny responsibility for our incarceration?

            

As I had to explain to a young friend in here that the guy claiming to have three associate degree and a masters is lying through his teeth, it occurred to me that prison mirrors the real world. We live in a world driven in large part by ignorance and prejudice. And we immediately fall back on an eye for an eye-revenge and retribution as the keys to justice. They aren’t. “Mercy,” the Apostle James said, “triumphs over judgment.”

            

“Be who you are.” I tell that to guys quite often as they try and impress me with their stories of their exploits. There isn’t anything glorious in being busted with thirty kilos or losing your wife and family over embezzled funds. Discern the truth, show mercy and compassion. It doesn’t require a stay at a Holiday Inn Express.