Read Online A Bad Idea I'm About to Do by Chris Gethard - Free Book Online Page B

victory lap half-heartedly incorporating his standard class routines, they made it clear that there would be no escaping so easily. Before he tasted freedom he would have to endure one final indignity. He would have to serve as the chaperone for that year’s trip to the Scared Straight program.
    â€œWell, kids,” he told us, “I won’t be in class next Wednesday because I’m being forced to go to prison. Prison has a lot to do with law. Would anyone like to volunteer and come along?” I looked around. No one raised their hands.
    Except me. I was shocked. Was no one else interested in seeing the inside of a jail? For about 80 percent of the people in the class, this was probably the only time they’d have that opportunity. I needed to go. Both for curiosity’s sake and for the sake
of getting the reaction I got upon raising my hand. Classmates nervously glanced in my direction. It brought joy to my soul seeing that volunteering for a trip to the bowels of incarceration freaked them out—it meant they were reevaluating me. That made me happy, even if they now thought I was a little bit crazy. Willfully entering the New Jersey penal system was one of the worst ideas I’d had in a while. That’s why I liked it.
    Later that week, I slipped a piece of paper to my mom while we ate dinner.
    â€œClass trip,” I said, trying to get the process done without her actually reading the permission slip. “Need you to sign this.”
    â€œRahway State Prison?” she asked. “What the hell is this?”
    â€œScared Straight,” I said. “I’m volunteering to go.”
    â€œAre you out of your mind?” my mother asked.
    â€œLet him go,” my father said. “Maybe it’ll do him some good.”
    Before we go any further, I think you should know something. At the time, this is what I looked like, roughly:
    I say “roughly” because I’d also exacerbated my obvious and numerous social problems by dyeing my hair bright red. So not only was I a seventeen-year-old who looked like an eleven-year-old, but my hair was a ludicrously vibrant scarlet. Which is good,
because I think we’d all agree that I don’t look feminine enough in that picture.
    If this story were fictional, it would probably be titled “Encyclopedia Brown and a Bus Full of Thugs Visit a State Prison.” Unfortunately, it was my real life.
    We weren’t going to just any prison. We were visiting Rahway State. This is the jail where the original Scared Straight film was produced. That film has since been condemned for encouraging wholly ineffective behavior that was deemed borderline child abuse. For a guy looking to see the genuinely fucked-up parts of life, it was perfect.
    I sat at the front of the bus with Knutsen. He stared out the window, ignoring us, undoubtedly dreaming of finding his personal Red and moving to a beach where they could build wooden boats. I realized that we had a lot in common. Here was a mild-mannered guy just like me, glasses and all. He felt stuck and wanted to get out, just like I did. The only difference was that he had put up with this for decades. Knutsen was exactly the type of guy I was expected to turn into. His visible frustrations were the future I feared. The part of me that climbed onto that bus was the crazy side that would not accept such a fate.
    The kids in the back shouted things such as “Yo Knutsen! Call ahead and tell them I’m coming! Warn those prisoners they need to be scared of me!” and the simpler but just as effective “I ain’t scared of shit, so fuck this.” But I knew better. While I would go home to a relatively normal life that afternoon, their problems ran deeper. After all, they didn’t volunteer for the trip. From Kenward, a badass rumored to have thrown an Indian dwarf down a staircase, to Frank the loudmouthed football player who thought the rules didn’t apply to him,