Meditations on Prison

     I, like most guys my age, have often contemplated what prison would be like; more specifically I wonder what my position in the prison’s social hierarchy would be. Would I be like Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape”, constantly berating the Nazi Guards with quirky escape attempts in the hopes of aiding the war effort? Or would I lead a rag-tag group of misfits to unite under the productive outlet of semi-competitive football like Burt Reynolds/Adam Sandler in “The Longest Yard”? Could I possibly be the one guy in prison who is actually innocent and forced to fight John Malkovich on a plane while working with John Cusack and the bumbling FBI (that last one was a reference to “Con Air”, if you didn’t get it then just watch TNT pretty much any Sunday afternoon)?

            After assessing the scarcity of Nazi War Camps, my lack of experience as an NFL quarterback, and the irrefutable fact that I’m not Nicholas Cage I quickly determined that none of these were likely personas for me to emanate. After looking in the mirror for a good 30 seconds I realized that I would more than likely be somebody’s bitch. This obviously shook me to the core, provoking many a sleepless night of me while trying to conceive an alternative to this vexing problem.

 Day after day, night after night, I couldn’t stop thinking about means of avoiding being the catcher’s mitt for the pitch of the products of the State Correctional Institution. Then it hit me like an unsuspecting backdoor pile drive: I would sell cocaine!

            It was a perfect idea. I would gain instant “street-cred”, keeping my man-hole Tyrone-free since coke-heads are crazier than a Cosby Sweater (look it up). Every time Buba wanted to find a sexual release with me to compensate for his 25-to-life sentence everyone would stop him in his tracks with something along the lines of “don’t tear up his ass, that’s where he puts our coke!”

            This also got me thinking about a way to corner the market. It soon became obvious to me that this seamless plan must already be in action across the country and I must therefore find a way to make myself better than my competition in order to ensure the diameter of my backdoor. My train of thought led me to the nearly self-evident fact that advertisement is the only thing that matters in business. Regardless of how good the product is, people will buy it depending on how flashy its advertisements are (that’s right I’m talking about you, Apple!). For this reason I determined that the best name for my product would be Pep-C. This phonetic similarity to Coca-Cola’s rival would give me a sturdy anti-Coke consumer base with the inmates because, let’s face it, people who hate Coca-Cola are the dredges of society. This would boost my demand and keep me phallic-free and when it comes down to it, isn’t that that real American Dream?