Signs of the Times - Stuck in the Narrows
December 2004
Criminal Justice: Stuck in the Narrows
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I've mentioned it before but it bears reconsidering since it's a topic frequently initiated by my visitors. Windows. Not the 4-inch windows (the ones where I got my head stuck twice), but other windows.

'Where are the other windows?' they ask looking around.

'There are no other windows,' I reply.

They shake their heads at me as if I'm an imbecile. 'No, no,' they smile. 'The windows where you can see.'

I repeat with false patience. 'There are no other windows.'

They scrunch up their faces. 'But how can you see? You can't see out of those.'

'I think that's the point,' I sigh.

'But how do you see?'

'Very narrowly,' I grunt. 'With blinkers.' I get a little excited. 'Sometimes with such desperation, I get my head stuck.' I stare at them hard. 'Do you now understand how I got my head stuck?'

Without fail, my visitors look at me with the blank vacant stare of people who don't understand the language being spoken and are nervous as to how they should respond. 'Ah ....'

They look away, bunching and sliding their lips like they are chewing salt water taffy, sip a drink and peep at their watches.

But the window is my Achilles, my weakness, my compulsion. 'Sometimes,' I try to sound rational and pleasant--cocktail banter voice--'I think if I just tilted my head like this....' I demonstrate. 'And move my eyes like that.' I strain my eyeballs trying to look sideways. 'I could see around the corner.'

This is met with silence, one of those silences where the maw of No Response engulfs your dignity. I want to cry. Window discussions always leave me blinking back prickly heat in my eyes, biting my lip and an aching loneliness.

'You're sure there are no other windows?' my visitor tries again.

I know this is a rhetorical social SOS question to Band-Aid the appalling gaffe I have committed, but the Achilles heel, the compulsion is bigger than my social graces. Or what's left of them.

'Lemme see,' I look around carefully. 'Do you see any other windows?' I make a melodramatic sweep with my arm. 'Nope. Me either. Maybe there are some special invisible wide windows available, but I can't see them to see them.' I'm almost panting. My visitors are wide-eyed. I do not know why they put up with my smart mouth, and as they drive home, they will probably wonder that too.

What makes me most crazy about narrow windows is that we expect people to see things they don't have the equipment to see with. If people have spent their 25 years living with a certain vision, a 10-week program isn't going to shift their paradigm. More than this, we expect people to have our view because we enjoy a nice wide window, when all they have is a sliver to peep through. It makes me wonder if our big wide windows do us any good when our own vision is so restricted. Never mind the narrow view we impose on others! But there I go again, getting my head stuck in a place it doesn't belong. (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, December 16, 2004)

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. This column is one of a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'


Comments? Questions? Write me at george@loper.org.