I Thought I Would Get Off Like the Rich Kids

It was a week before my eighteenth birthday; I was a drug dealer. Hooked also, but with no cares. From a small town where no one had any money, I figured I would get off like the rich kids whose daddies bought their freedom. But my daddy was a convict, and he had no money. He only had a son, me. The judge decided to make an example of me. Because there would be no fuss. Because I was a poor boy from a poor family, and my family was deemed “bad”. I was “bad” by association, and of course, my mother was the town whore. Which did not help. So they put me in for twenty-five years, and I was not even eighteen. Don’t worry, a public defender who did not know me lied. You might have to serve eight. I got into fights because I did not want to do what others did. I wanted to keep myself for myself. Or for a nice girl. I was a horrible inmate. The guards were always dragging me to the prison doctor. I got sent away before I was eighteen. I came out a week before my forty-third birthday. My youth spent in prison, with others who made a mistake, most of them poor, many black. I was one of the few whites in there, because they do not usually make examples of us. But I was a poor kid from a poor family, and they wanted to make an example of me. Lesson learned. Try to be rich in America. And do not make any mistakes if you are black or poor.