Watching a Train Wreck

For a long time, the dumbest crook I ever dealt with was this little blond kid. He'd obviously seen too many movies about how tough guy gangstas acted, but he couldn't pull it off. The two specific incidents I remember: Walking into his cell while he was at lunch I saw a piece of paper on his desk "Note to self- When Miller is here he searches rooms, so... " followed by a list of all of his contraband and where he should hide it. Note in plain sight. Idiot.

The second time was more dangerous- he's a little white guy in the court holding cell with a good number of mostly black inmates and he walks up to another white inmate and loudly strikes up a conversation, "Hey, are you familiar with the nigger-jew conspiracy that's destroying America?" I got him out of there before he got his ass beat. Moron.

Saw him again last night. Ten years or more later. He hasn't aged well, drugs are bad that way. He's gone from being a blank-eyed, talkative idiot kid to a shifty-eyed talkative guy with bad skin and bad judgment.

He's very happy. He's back in jail but that's just been a little mistake. He's been clean and sober for over a month. He's met the perfect woman. She's schizophrenic, sees things that aren't there and hears voices and she's a heroin addict, but she's been in treatment and has been off heroin for seven weeks. She may have stopped suddenly screaming for no reason, he's not sure since he hasn't seen her since he came to jail. That was her one habit that bothered him.

He's in love. He's planning their life together. It's not a plan in the ordinary sense of the word, like with steps and goals and all that. Pretty much he says they'll stay clean and stay together and everything will work out. That's his plan. He wants me to be happy for him. I'm polite and wish him luck, but it would take either a miracle or a huge amount of thought and hard work to change the collision course his life is on, and a miracle is the more likely event.