I wish that I had the writing talent of my friend who wrote this... It's priceless... He rides too and he works with me in a State Prison. Really warped individual live most of us there.

The Test

 When I decided to apply for a job as a Corrections Officer I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I suppose I had the vision of swaggering around in a uniform being mean to people and getting paid for it. All of my experience with prison life was limited to television, movies and books.

 Applying for the job was easy enough. I just went online and found the DOC website, filled out a form and clicked the mouse. It took a week or so to receive a response with the date of the video test. I made another trip or two in the truck as I waited for the test date, trying to imagine what a video test would consist of.

 The day of the test arrived and of course, I got lost trying to find the testing site. This raised my anxiety level to a fever pitch so that when I finally made it to the testing room on the second floor I was out of breath and badly in need of a cigarette. The test was actually quite interesting in that the video showed different scenarios involving CO’s and offenders and asked how you would handle each one. I almost over-thought it though, by trying to guess which answer they were looking for instead of just marking the answer as I would handle it with no training.

 Apparently, though, I did well enough to be called back for the physical evaluation. This was the part that I had been dreading. I had no idea what to expect but I knew that I had sat in a truck for 25 plus years and smoked 3 to 4 packs of cigarettes a day. I was in shape alright, the shape of the Pillsbury doughboy. Anyway, at last I knew what I was up against: go up two steps, across a platform, down two steps, bend and retrieve an object under the platform , set it on the platform, run 300 yards, drag a dummy weighing 150 pounds 18 feet. No problem, until I read the part about doing it in two minutes and sixteen seconds!  Have they lost their collective minds????? I am a fat old truckdriver, this is gonna kill me!!!!

 300 yards works out to 3 football fields or 5.77 times around my tractor/trailer. Ok, now that isn’t so bad. Wait…5.77 times around the truck? I have to take a smoke break after walking around it once to thump the tires. This is not good. I sat down and had a cigarette.

 When I finished that pack, I crawled into the car and headed to Wal-mart to buy a pair of tennis shoes since the test would take place in a gymnasium. I circled the parking lot, puffing on a Camel, waiting for one of the handicapped parking spots to open up. I drummed my fingers impatiently on the dash as an old man struggled to get his oxygen bottle on its little dolly into the car with him. I could tell he wasn’t really handicapped because he wasn’t using a wheelchair, so I honked the horn at him to get things moving. He finally backed out of the spot but before I could slide in some woman in a van took it. Those cripples get all the good parking spots.  I gave up and took a spot further down the row.  I wanted to kick the leg out from under her walker as I passed her near the front door.

 It had been over 20 years since I had worn anything but cowboy boots so the choices in tennis shoes was simply astonishing to me. There were shoes for basketball, running, soccer, shoes with little airshocks in them, shoes with headlights and taillights and the ones that really worried me, crosstrainers. Who knew they made special shoes for transvestites. Anyway, I bought the cheapest shoes I could find and headed home.

 I got home and decided, by the time I bent over far enough to tie the damned shoes, that I should have bought the ones with Velcro instead of laces. I leaned back and lit a smoke as I rested from the stretching. I had 9 days to get ready for this marathon.

 The next thing I had to do was measure out 300 yards on the street in front of the house. I finished my smoke and wandered out to the truck to get my tape measure. I grabbed the 50 foot tape measure and my calculator, since the tape was in feet and I needed to convert that to yards, I knew the math would probably trip me up.

 I strung out the tape behind me as I walked down the street, using pebbles to mark each 50 foot section. My back was beginning to ache from all that bending over and my hamstrings were tightening from the walking so after I got 100 feet measured out, I sat down on the curb and rested. I realized that I had left my cigarettes on the porch. Well, I needed to cut back a bit.

 An hour or so later I awoke from my nap, stiff and sore from all the exercise and sleeping on the concrete curb. Thankfully it grew dark before I finished so the game was called due to darkness. I made a pledge to myself, as I shuffled back to the house, that I would do this. I would get up early the next morning and get this distance measured and I would run that 300 yards or die trying.

 True to my word I arose at the crack of 11:30ish the next morning and sat on the porch in my boxers and brand new tennis shoes, smoking and drinking coffee. I was very aware, from some of my reading, that long distance running is a mental game, and that all I had to do was visualize and it would be so. I leaned back, closed my eyes and pictured myself bounding down the street, strong and determined, elbows close to my side, my sleek athletic body in perfect rhythm. I awoke when the Camel between my fingers burnt them.

 I began my stretching by bending down and tying my shoes. It took a bit of time but I finally found a way to sort of lean around the belly lying in my lap to reach the laces. At last I was ready. I stood at the start line, filling my lungs with the cool, fresh Missouri air, saturating my blood with oxygen. After the coughing fit I got all that cellulite headed in the same general direction and sort of waddle/jogged my way down the track.

 At the 50 foot mark I had built up a head of steam like a locomotive. Oh, it felt so good, this was it, I was on my way. Somewhere around the 55 foot mark, my belly began to outpace my feet. I lost the rhythm. I would push off with the trailing foot, but could get no really altitude because at the point my belly was on the downward stroke. Then, disaster struck. I tried to stop to get back in sync but my caboose overran the locomotive and I went down in a heap. My neighbor gave me a ride home.

 I sat on the porch, smoking a cigarette and pondering the situation. I realized that I had tried to do too much too soon. After lunch and a short 2 hour nap, I was back out there, walking down the street. I made it to the halfway point before the calves of my legs began to cramp and I had to use the cellphone to call Barb and have her come get me. She helped me into the house as I wondered aloud if I could go to Wal-mart and find the old man with his oxygen bottle. I lay gasping on the couch until she left for Bingo and then I duct taped her electric mixer to the side of the bathtub and made myself a sort of mini-whirlpool to sooth my aching muscles.

 As I lay back in the warm water, smoking, I bumped the mixer and it fell into the bath. The electricity shot through my body, I bounced from the tub and out the front door, screaming like a banshee, stark naked, and ran that 300 yards in 15 seconds flat. Somewhere around the 290 yard mark I had an epiphany. Motivation is the key to success. I knew now that I would pass this test.

 The day of the test I arrived early, having reconnoitered the location the previous day to avoid any confusion or undue stress that might in anyway hamper my performance. I watched with the utmost patience as others huffed and puffed their way around the cones placed on the gymnasium floor. The tiny button concealed in my hand assured me that I would not, could not, fail this test.

 Finally, I stood at the start line. The tester gave me the instructions, I surveyed the platform, the steps, the object to be retrieved and the dummy lying there in wait. The whistle blew and I glided the first few steps to the platform, ascended it with ease, flowed down the opposite side, bend and retrieved the object and placed it on the platform. I then turned to the cones and began my journey, blasting down the straights and slowing slightly for the turns at each end.

 At the halfway mark, I felt my body begin to tire, my legs to feel like rubber, my breath was wheezing, I was dying. With grim determination I pressed the tiny button in my hand, just a quick push and release. The business end of the stockprod that was duct taped between my ass cheeks sparked and I shifted gears as though my tailfeathers were on fire.

 I was bounding around the track now, strides lengthened, a high pitched scream on my lip as I pressed the button each time a foot hit the floor. The cones were a blur as I flew past. I made the final turn, slid to a stop before the dummy, grabbed the rope, leaned into it and hit the button in a long sustained burst. As the stockprod shot fire between my butt cheeks I farted. Like a well shot rocket, I slammed into the wall fifty feet from where the dummy had laid.

 As I lay in a heap, sobbing, the tester walked over and said, “You passed and , ummm, your tennis shoes are smoldering”.

Curt Patterson

May, 2009