At lunch the other day, I sat beside a very old looking woman. As I sat there eating my hamburger yakisoba I thought, "How sad! How awful. How just plain mean to incarcerate such an elderly lady." I was quite perturbed. After all this is a maximum security prison. How dangerous could she be?

Then she opened her mouth.

And I blinked and swallowed.

She was not a harmless old lady at all but an 18-year-old thug disguised in an old woman's skin. Vicious. Mean. Filthy mouthed. I was shocked. And I'm not often shocked these days.

Up until this point, I had treated her with respect, with deference. I had fetched her something to drink. Called her "Ma'am." But now my attitude changed.

"Get me some more juice," she elbowed me. When I swiveled my head to look at her, I saw that she was using me, laughing at me.

Pride, anger, a deep-rooted arrogance surged through me. I cocked an eyebrow. "I think not," I replied in my most wiffy tones and resumed eating. "Gotcha, you nasty old bat," I smirked to myself. But something didn't quite sit right.

I put up my tray. Left the mess hall, and strolled to work enjoying the sun, but also feeling a bit weird. Annoyingly uncomfortable. My uniform felt twisted and scratchy. A leaden heaviness gripped my shoulders and was draining into my chest. I felt ghastly and it wasn't lunch.

It was me. I was the one who had acted like a thug. I had changed my entire behavior towards the woman, "Good manners," I chided myself, "and respect are absolutes not variables."

When I treat someone with dignity it speaks to my character not theirs. And when I treat someone with contempt, again it speaks to the flaws of my own nature not theirs. It's a hard lesson I can't seem to master. I am willing to give respect when I think it's deserved but it's a stretch to give it to those who obviously don't. I mean what in the world would happen if we gave respect to all and sundry? A worldwide epidemic of courtesy? Decency? Noblesse?

I suspect in the future that I'll be fetching juice for nasty old bats and feeling stupid doing it. But then perhaps someday someone will extend me the same courtesy. (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, October 9, 2003).

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. She is serving a 90 year sentence as an accessory to the murder of her parents in 1985. This column was first printed as part of a series, under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'