it amazes me how downwardly a live could have spiraled in just 21 short years.
I know exactly what you mean. I see some of these people and what they have managed to do to their lives in so few years, and it sometimes leaves me astounded.
Of course, the other extreme would be some of the "long timers" I've had on parole. Guys who spend 20+ years in prison. Not the county jail, prison. They get out and simply cannot handle it, so they do something minor to get sent back. I recall one man in particular. First degree murder, pled guilty, admitted shotgunning three people to death. He served 27 years and got paroled. Shortly afterward, he meets a woman he knew back then and learned that he has a daughter by her. DNA confirmed it. They marry, and I was actually optimistic that he just might have the support he needed to make it.
Umm.....no.
He told me one day that he just couldn't handle it. The one thing that really stuck to me, and to keep from reciting that whole passage from "Shawshank Redemption", was when he talked about pumping gas. He looked at me and said very seriously, "Do you have any idea how much a ***ing gas pump has changed in 27 years? I have no idea how to use most of these things, and no two places seem to have the same kind. That's shameful. I'm a man. I'm not supposed to need my wife to pump my damn gas." He also talked about going into a McDonald's and having no idea what anything on the menu was except a Big Mac and he hated those. He said that watching 6 year old kids be able to know this stuff while he had to ask just what the merry hell a McFlurry is was really getting to him.
So he wrecked his car, made sure he had a little THC in his system, plus a roach or three in the ashtray for the cops to find, and went back to the poke. He's out again now, seeing a different officer. I don't see much change though.
Frightening kinda.
