Jail Time

Some years ago I did jail time, having been judged by a store detective and then a policeman as an accomplice of another's crime. (I was innocent.) A free ride to the county jail, relinquishing of all possessions, fingerprinting and photo, then placed in a small holding cell with solid walls and one small window in the door, and another prisoner making guttural sounds and grinding his teeth.

After a while, who knows how long, jail time is like no other time, I was taken to a large rectangular cell containing 14 cots, seven on each long wall, with an open toilet at one end and the cell door at the other. Two men were asleep or passed out on two of the bunks. Seven other inmates gazed at me curiously as I claimed a bunk and sat on its folded-back mattress in a semi-lotus position, relaxed and unmoving, as I searched for my options on getting out of jail.

Time went by. One loud-mouthed jerk shifted from his never-ending self-inflating harangue and recounting of his exploits to talking the others into luring a guard inside by one inmate pretending to be sick, then all jumping the guard and pounding the bejesus out of him. All seemed to agree that was a great idea.

O great! I was already nailed as an accomplice to something I had no awareness of. Now I was about to be an unwilling accomplice to something I knew about. I had had enough! I got off my bunk with cold steel deliberateness, already centering firmly from hours of sitting unmoving in deep meditation, and walked down that aisle to the door where the idiot was standing, my line of energy cast ahead of me to infinity, as if I was going to walk right through him and the door, and I was. His only options were to move or get knocked down. He moved. The consciousness state in the cell changed. His plan evaporated.

I reached the door, then turned around. He smiled weakly and said, "Hello, sir. How are you?" I said nothing and went back to my bunk, back into meditation position. The cell went calm.