Just when I had become accostomed to Benetton’s style of alternative advertising, they go and hit me over the head with a profile of death row inmates. At first I laughed a bit, when the interview sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit:
Q: What does that feel like, to lose your freedom?
A: Don’t feel too good. I don’t know how to really break it down for you. I’m not happy about it.
Nope, didn’t think you would be too happy about that loss of freedom thing. But other inmates are more thoughtful, and make you wonder if that could’ve been you in prison:
And when I was fifteen years old I started going out in the world. But I got discouraged. I got to thinking that everybody in the world was crooked, there ain’t no honest people in this world. What’s the point of me being honest. So I kind of gave in and started doing drugs and getting into crime.
Q: Do you still believe that?
A: To a certain degree, yes. I believe everyone has their faults. I was looking for a perfect world back then. Now I realize there is no perfect world. I can adjust. But as a teenager, I just couldn’t comprehend that.
I remember being so much more idealistic in high school and college. Recently I was in Walter’s basement and saw the philisophical quotations we had scrawed with chalk on the walls. I still strive to do well, but my transition from idealist to positive pragmatist has been gradual and littered with good fortune. Then again, the above quoted inmates turned down college scholarships, which he looks back on as good fortune he didn’t take advantage of.