Ole’ Skool

I find it weird hearing young prisoners call me Ole’ Skool. In my mind I’m still this sixteen-year-old kid sent to prison for life. But the years have passed. Twenty-five to be exact. And now I am older. So when a young prisoner calls me Ole’ Skool, I cringe.

I remember my first years in prison. I used to call the older prisoners Ole’ Skool, too. They were the ones older than me, bigger than me, smarter than me, and had time in longer than me.

It’s funny how things spin back around. Now that I’m the Ole’ Skool, I’m the one older than them, bigger than them, (sometimes) smarter than them, and I definitely have more time in than them.

Talk about time, I’ve been locked up longer than many of these young men have been alive. Who knew twenty-five years ago that some day I would be locked in a cell with a young man who wasn’t even alive when I came to prison? Talk about cycles. I told a young guy the other day that the day he was born, I was in solitary confinement struggling to maintain my sanity.

I’m sure the Ole’ Skools who saw me dragged into prison thought the same thing when they first saw me. I met older prisoners who had been in prison longer than I had been alive, too, when I first came to prison. I wonder if they thought it was sad to see me like that, so young and so confused. I wonder if they thought eventually I would take their place and become like…..like…..them—Ole’ Skool. Damn!

Now I am forty-one years old. I’m Ole’ Skool now. But a piece of me still remembers my sixteen-year-old self. The confused, orphaned little boy who only needed someone to guide him in the right direction. I look at all the things I really needed in my life to make a positive difference. And I use that sixteen-year-old’s neglect as fuel for teaching these young men that life has more to offer them than just a prison cell.

But I can’t lie. Sometimes it hurts to look into the mirror, to see this aging man withering away in a prison cell with no clear light at the end of the tunnel. It makes me feel sad, not just for the aging man, but for that sixteen-year-old kid whose ignorance and foolishness led that aging man into a prison cell. If this aging man could have got hold of that sixteen-year-old kid before the system swallowed him whole, his life would have been completely different.

But here I am. This aging man sees that sixteen-year-old kid in all these young men who come to prison, and his only instinct is to save their lives before too many years pass by. This me, this ‘I’ that I am has found purpose in this pursuit. And I plan to spend the rest of my days fighting for these young men to go home while they still have a chance to flourish, to make something better with their lives. It’s the best I can do at this point, to save lives and to make the world a better place. And in the end, they’ll remember that Ole’ Skool man who saved them from a life of sorrow and pain. And that’s what it will mean to me to be Ole’ Skool.