You will recall that last week the commissary lady let us down. We waited impatiently for her to arrive with her bags of treats. Hour after hour we pressed our faces into the glass watching for her until the guards announced she would make no appearance. We revere her as Santa Clause, the tooth fairy and Jesus, all rolled into one. Her selfless quest to bring us joy elevates her above mere mortals. But after she failed to come and left us all empty handed, (and bellied), there was only one reasonable conclusion we could reach:
The commissary lady is a whore.
She proved that once again today, but before I detail her latest transgressions, I must first address soup.
The one thing every commissary order has in common is soup. Not ordinary soup, mind you, but Ramen noodles. They come in four flavors: Chili, Beef, Chicken, and spicy vegetable. But the truth is they should all be labelled as "salt flavored". They are absolutely poison to your body as each of them contains as much sodium as the dead sea. But we order and consume them in bulk because a soup is not just a soup.
A soup is a unity of currency. Every thing is valued in soups. A bottom bunk next to me just opened up and the guy above it was very happy to move down. But he was offered a soup to allow another guy to take it and he accepted. Bottom bunk is worth a soup.
In jails and prisons Ramen noodles ought to be stamped with "legal tender for all debts, public and private". I bought a special mattress last week for 2 soups and it was worth every noodle. Lose a game of spades? Give the man a soup.
But soup means more too. I realized this past week that many have no soup. I asked around, and the consensus is that people without soup either don't have anyone to put money on their books, or they don't have anyone willing to put money on their books.Either way, they are alone. In addition to not getting a bag of unhealthy joy from the commissary lady(whore), they have no one to call. There are no visits. There is no one to pick them up when they get released.
A soupless guy just got released. He'd intimated that he was homeless earlier in the week. So I asked him where he was going-who was picking him up? He said he would walk to Interstate 45 and sleep under the overpass.
Soup is not always just soup.
This afternoon, after yet another stressful day waiting for the commissary lady, she appeared as if from nowhere. Grown men wept while they jockeyed for position at the door slot through which her goodies poured forth. Her bags dwindled away to nothing. I was left aghast- empty handed and ashamed.
No soup for me.
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