I was eating at Fazolis in Terre Haute In. A man came in the store came off the street and asked for a meal. The manager refused. I went on like every one else like it was not any of my business. As I left, I saw him sitting on a bench. How I had wished that I had paid for his meal. What would it have hurt? Now I am left with the haunting impression of that man sitting on a bench looking at me with a hungry stare. How I wished that I had done the right thing and fed this man at least one meal. Every Thanksgiving as I sit in front of a table of plenty this man’s blank hungry stare haunts me. It also reminds me as to how thankful we should be for our friends and family and our table loaded with plenty of meats, vegetables, and deserts.
Last week an individual told me how his son and some of his friends had gathered together and made a number of sandwiches out of peanut butter and jelly. This group of good Samaritans then went to the ghetto district and passed these sandwiches out. He said that the people on the receiving end were very grateful and appreciative.
Indeed we are tied up in our own little world of the more fortunate and educated where we have or can make a living. We do not know what it is like not being in a world of the uneducated or unprivileged. We do not know what it is like not being able to find a job or what it is like not being able to feed our family or ourselves. We do not know what it is like to be addicted to drugs or be blackballed because we have a prison record.
A few years ago I had the privilege of teaching GED to prisoner inmates at Spencer In. You picture prison inmates as being mean unruly, vulgar and even pathetic. However I found them to be none of the above. In the one six month period we had eight prisoners tested and passed the GED tests. Perhaps this helped them to obtain jobs when they got out of jail. I found these jailed students to be nice and appreciative more so than some ordinary high school students. Because they had their knocks in life, they were more willing and receptive to do what was necessary to get out of this rut in life. I looked around me in this prison environment. As I remember the windows were about six inches by about a foot. I remember their outside recreation area as being an area about the size of a room with a basketball goal. The overhead of this room was grated with prison bars. There was no way that you could see the outside without looking through prison bars. Even the small time I was in this environment, I got the pent up feeling and wondered what it would be to be in this pent up environment day after day. The jail was always loaded beyond capacity. There was no way someone could go outside or even run around a small area in the open sunshine ever.
In a GED/prison seminar I once voiced my opinion to a Judge. I told him of having a German Police dog that was given to me. This dog had been attached to a pole on a log chain. Children had gone by and threw things at it and of course the dog responded by threatening and vicious lunges. After the dog was given to me, I was out in the country and gradually let the dog loose out in the country. The dog mellowed. The vicious characteristics disappeared. I told the Judge that prisoners being pent up like they are help develop such vicious tendencies. The Judge agreed with me.
Yes, we have a lot to be thankful for which includes or friends, family, church, and that we were not raised in such an environment like some of these prisoners that helped lead them to a life of crime.
