Bad day in jail for Lisi

This is a new job: she was with the PR Department with the local PD-neighborhood watch, programs at the preschools, MacGruff....stuff like that. She was really good at her job and personable and everyone loved her.

Now she works in a juvenile detention center and no one likes her. Well, of course not-they are kids and they're locked up. The food is terrible, somebody is either telling you what to do all day long or watching you do what they ust told you to do. Visits once a week. A lot of structure and direction and discipline.

And they are sometimes put in holding cages because they can't roll with the rules. They don;t much like it and holler and rattle the bars--typical tv prison stuff.

Except today she was working in the central office right across from the cages. The one really tough 12 year old told her and everyone else that he was going to "smoke them on the outs"...shoot them when he got out. He made a little gun hand and pretended to shoot her and scream at her and then pretend to BE her, screaming for her life.

It's easy to tell her that by tomorrow he will have settled down-that this was just a volatile and random outburst. It feels personal, but it's not. I deal with it every day--surrounded by people who hate me, who hate everything I stand for, who hate that I draw breath. It's part of the job.

And it scared her, too....what if he DID track her down? Girlie, I doubt he reads and he probably will be going home to Pixley or Farmersville or Woodville and he probably couldn't FIND the center if he had a map. A lot of people in lockup don't even know where they are when they're locked up.

And she just has to work it out. This is part of the job---for all of us. I'm just glad she has me to talk to.
Because it's scary to have someone threaten to smoke you on the outs.