...retold with the permission of my Dad. Or - 'How I ever ended up coming across the link that I tried to turn FunkedUp to stone with.'
Or maybe 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cons'.
I'm only posting this because it's an actual true story and the images you'll get from it in your head may be funnier than the picture.
I only get a couple - as in 2-3 free days every 2 or 3 weeks right now to screw around on the internet, and that's on a laptop.
So I was checking the news and read the story about how Susan Smith - the evil person who drowned her own two kids and blamed it on a 'carjacking by a black man' - had placed a 'personal add' from prison. So I went to the link for the service she used that was provided by the news story.
I honestly thought - due to the tone and wording of her 'personal add' that she was looking for a 'pen pal'. She's in prison for life, right? Maybe she just wants someone to 'talk' to in some way - because if they beat and kill child molesters in a male prison I don't think she's been too well received by the Mothers she is imprisoned with.
My Dad is heavily involved with the BSA and has been for a long time. I can't remember the exact reason - if it was merit badge related or maybe just a 'good works' type of thing but I remember my Dad talking about sending a birthday card to people in prison and asking them some questions that profile if they are eligible for some low risk (to the employer) work when they get released. My Dad had a very close friend from his youth who did some dumb things and spent alot of time in prison. When he tried to implement this in some way he was discouraged by the fact that there's a 'prison ministries' type outfit that basically has a 'lock' on easy location and contacting of convicts who are about to be release from state prisons for non-violent and/or non-sexual crimes.
Basically - based on his childhood Friend's advice - he was trying to get 20 year olds busted for posession of drugs a job with forestry outfits so they could:
A. Get a job right out of prison, and thus have a work reference that was fairly solid in a couple of years.
B. Have a job far from 'downtown', which apparently would make it harder for them to get into trouble again immediately.
So I sent him the link for
http://www. writeaprisoner.com. If I had only known - or explored even a little.
Mom and Dad are basically retired. Dad is off to play golf and asks Mom to get some names of prisoners to write.
Mom was raised Mormom in a mining town in the middle of Utah. Population ~200, all of them Mormons and all of them either farmers or miners. The nearest 'big town' (one that had a movie theater, and a full size general store) was almost 2 hours away by car. Part of my Dad's plan for a nuclear attack by the Soviets was to get in our airplane and fly to this town - because, to quote my Dad - "It is the last place the Soviets would ever attack - I highly doubt it is on a map outside the State of Utah".
In other words, my Mom is not exactly the 'worldly' type.
So she goes to
http://www.writeaprisoner.com, and being a total sweetheart she immediately goes to the 'prisoners who have not received mail' section - I mean if you're trying to help someone out you look for the people having the roughest time, right?
The add at the top of the list, under 'prisoners who have not received mail':
http://writeaprisoner.com/template.asp?i=z-311651So after I get a politely worded 'WTF!?' reply from my Dad via email I go check out the site. Talk about Pandora's Box...I've got to say there were 3 or 4 I was going to post for FunkedUp but didn't - when it was some 45 year old lady who was getting out of prison and really sounding desperate to try and start a normal life - sorry I couldn't poke fun at that. Maybe I could relate? I felt the same way after trying to start a normal life after spending 21 hours/day playing WB for 6 months when I first found WB.
But 'TeddyBaby' was too much. I was laughing out loud near people who were really in need of sleep and likely to get really pissed if I woke them. The pose, combined with the text of the ad...was too much for me to resist. I have failed the test...
Mike/wulfie
