2CU: Stick / Sanity and Steel Doors

In prison, sanity is balanced by lost years and steel doors. Stick takes our workshop audiences on a quick mental venture as he compares freedom to lines captivity.

Sanity and Steel Doors

2^nd Chance University keeps the experience real, giving all a taste of what life behind bars is like in an effort to pull workshop participants back onto their path.

Stick

Lines are formed in a silent hypnotic manner as we are told how to walk, where to sit, and when to think. Don’t talk or act on your own initiative, for those things are reserved for the free world.

Obey, work, obey, work, and then you notice a faraway look in your coworker’s cold gray eyes. Where is he looking?

For some it’s 2025 and for others 2040. Still others can only look back in time to that one precious thought, that real moment in time, freedom, knowing they will never hold freedom ever again.

Interactive Insight

In the eyes of an ex-convict, what do you think freedom means? Why would Stick claim they will never hold freedom ever again?

• To an ex-convict, what do you believe freedom means?

After our work day we silently shuffle down the quarter-mile-long hallway that connects to our wings. They lead us to our six-by-nine-foot homes.

Cruel steel doors loudly slam behind us as we step inside the small, dreary existence of home. The few possessions we are allowed to keep try to fill the emptiness of our cement boxes.

Pictures from home, a small plastic radio and commissary goods are no match for the colorless white and gray that overwhelms our comfortless cells. But in this apathetic world these small concessions mean as much as having a ten thousand dollar bank account in the free-world.

Interactive Insight

• If you were in prison, what possessions would you hold most dear and why

Day becomes night and night becomes day with little variation in most of our lives.

We think back on past mistakes that relentlessly chew on our memories.

For most of us these memories are hurtful and hateful things we try to erase, but they continue to creep, crawling into our awareness like a stinging scorpion. Heartaches and headaches are now measured in choices that were wrong.

Sanity is balanced by lost years and steel doors.

We suffer from a broken past and a distant, uncertain future of when and how. When are we going to get out, and how? Walking or carried out feet first?

Depression and doubt constantly lurk in the shadows of our mind. Insanity hides just behind them.

Interactive Insight

• Do you believe Stick’s words ring true to what it’s like in prison? Why or why not? What do you think prison is like on the soul and sanity?

I welcome your stories to be added into our series. If you chose to share or support, email me directly.

For those wishing to introduce 2CU and our programs into an organization, institution, or facility, step forward; together we can make a difference.

Danny Huffman
407-878-0474
2^nd Chance University
http://www.2ndChanceUniversity.org
dhuffman@2ndChanceUniversity.org

2CU: The Real Thing

Throughout our programs Stick and Duck detail their experiences about doing time. Though there are entertaining movies and books about prison life, those don’t compare to the real thing.

The Real Thing

Bosses scream while walking the runs of our prison wing all day and most of the night. The nights are the worst. Some of their voices are all right but most of them grate on our nerve endings, like fingernails screeching against a blackboard. Other sounds pierce the fleet slices of nightly solitude.

The banging of locker doors, the abusive curses from one row to another, and the pitiful pleadings and crying of, “please no more, no more” make this world one nobody could understand without experiencing it.

We cover our ears, longing for the unnatural acts to be over quickly. A few of us begin to pray for the person being molested. We get very little sleep.

Stick

Insight

What do you think you know about doing time and prison life?

Doing Time:

Prison life:

2^nd Chance University partners with organizations/institutions dedicated to those who have stumbled. Our material and workshops take advantage of real people, real life, and real issues.

For those wishing to partner with 2CU and our programs into an organization, institution, or facility, please step forward; together we can make a difference.

Danny Huffman
407-878-0474
http://www.2ndChanceUniversit.org
2^nd Chance University, nonprofit 501(c)
dhuffman@2ndChanceUniversity.org

2CU: Justice-Involved Programs

2^nd Chance University is a non-profit dedicated to educating, employing, and empowering the justice-involved. Our 18-book, 4-6 month intensive programs take an aggressive interactive approach founded by trauma-informed care, behavioral modification, and consciousness consequence theory.

2^nd Chance University programs serve youth (14-17 years of age), adult diversion to incarceration (18-24 years of age, low level offense), and adult pre/post release.

Our material and workshops take advantage of real people, real life, and real issues. Virtual participants throughout the pages are real and so is their story.

During these submission we bring core characters to the forefront, are not censored, and depict life during and after arrest factually. I encourage each reader to follow the stories, respond to the questions, and regain lost hope.

At this time, let me introduce Stick, a solid contributor and has been with 2^nd Chance University since 2012.

• Served 11 ½ years in one of the hardest penal systems in the country, Texas.

Doing time: A tall raw-boned red headed man sat next to me in the holding cell. He said his name was Red. We talked a little and he told me he was in for stabbing his girlfriend with a pitchfork. She didn’t die.

“But,” he said, “She won’t be looking at any other men now!”

I asked, “Why’s that?”

Red said, “I stuck the pitchfork in her face and the prongs went into her eyes, so now she can’t see.”

A cold chill went up my spine as I looked at this pasty faced man, I didn’t comment, but moved a few inches away.

Stick

Insight: What life and everyday choices will you give up by going to prison?

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In future articles, we will learn more about Stick, Duck, and others as they share their story.

2^nd Chance University is a non-profit designed for those who have stumbled within our justice system as they regain their Commitment, Hope, and Empowerment.

I welcome your stories to be added into our series. If you chose to share or support, email me directly. For those wishing to introduce 2CU and our programs into an organization, institution, or facility, please step forward.

Danny Huffman
dhuffman@2ndChanceUniversity.org
2^nd Chance University