It’s easier using the fist-in-your-face approach instead of calmly explaining your position on a topic. How else do you make someone understand your point of view? How else do you get someone to commit to your beliefs? That’s how my students communicate. They feel getting louder and louder wins the argument; if it doesn’t, then a major ass-whipping is sure to follow.In anger management, assault-offenders, and other self-help courses, the prisoners are instructed to write their way through various scenarios. By writing, or thinking through a situation, one would hope certain impulses would change. “Think before you react,” becomes the mantra—only one problem: the other guy; he might get a jump on you, he might enforce his own convictions. Still, it doesn’t hurt to try to change a few misguided souls, and hopefully Clockwork Orange will not be revisited.
I gave my students the following writing assignment: In 300 words or less, continue my story “Pitch” from the perspective of an inmate (in essence, put yourself into the situation). They knew this was a creative writing exercise and that I wouldn’t be diagnosing their problems based on what they wrote. Most of the stories I received did indeed have too much physical violence (I won’t divulge the numerous ways a teacher can be tortured); however, one story stood out from the rest. Without further ado:
“Catch” by I-Wish-To-Remain-Anonymous
I wouldn't let go of his wrist. He wouldn't listen to me.
He tells me I won’t get paroled if I keep this behavior up.
I tell him, “It’s too late, I’ll have LIFE once I get what I want.”
He asks, “So what’s your pitch?”
I laugh. “You think you got it all figured out.” I make my observation, “You know what goes on in the classroom, but you don’t know what happens out there on the yard … or in the cellblock.”
He asks me, “What are you getting at?”
“Let’s just say I’ve come face to face with pitches before. Sunglasses were my only option.”
He looks perplexed.
I reach back into the wastepaper basket and grab my butterscotch candy. I tell him, “You’re gonna wish you ate this, you quick-witted bastard.”
He tries to loosen my grip.
“Free is a contradiction,” I say. “Nothing in life is free. There’s always a catch. You have to pay a price for everything you do.”
8 comments:
Impressive – going from pitch to the use of catch in that way.
And he’s right. There does always seem to be a price to pay.
(I'd give his work an A.)
Life is free; it is in the spending of it that the costs come.
Never a superior intellectual play, always the threat of violence. It's a sad world he lives in when he can't even recognize or aspire to yours...
Pretty smooth.
Cool, Teach!
Cool, man.
"They feel getting louder and louder wins the argument; if it doesn’t, then a major ass-whipping is sure to follow." -- This sums up Bush-Cheney foreign policy!
And there's the catch.
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."
I guess it's all in your perspective. And in how free you really are. (I'm just whispering...)
Cool. D
That was pretty interesting. Thanks for sharing.
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