Friday, March 23, 2007

Poseur Sorts Through The Mail

Part of my job at the court is to go thorugh prisoner mail, which is alternatively heartbreaking and hysterical. Really depending on how much coffee I've had that day. And because we're all horrible people, we like to share our favorites with each other in the office, with the current front-runner being this line from a letter on behalf of a prisoner, "how to repair his train wreck and get his choo choo back on the right track to Successville."

OK, we've been making fun of that metaphor for a few days now, but there's a certain amount of compassion and honesty there I really like. I want to mock it, but really, here's someone pleading for someone they love to get a second chance. Who am I to make fun of that? That's an act of love. There's a willingness there to put yourself out there, to make yourself look foolish to try and right what you perceive to be a wrong. There's a certain vulnerability to that I really respect. If the analogy is pretty silly, so what?

That's an actual person in jail and there's another person on the outside who still loves them so much that they would mail me a thirty-page plea on why he deserves a second chance. And there's nothing funny about that.

Just heartbreaking.

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