We lost…again. Marcos and I made it to the final round of the handball tournament yet again, and yet again we lost, mostly due to my inferior skill level. 🙁 We ended up playing against Blue (a 59 yo, kind of silly Latino guy who is one of the porters) and this newer, young Latino guy, who’s name I don’t know, who is in awesome shape and plays some mean power-handbball. He and Marcos fought it out in the front of the court while Blue and I sat back and watched. LOL Another factor in our loss, aside from my lack of skill, was that we had to play the semi-final round tonight just before the final game. The other team had already won their semi-final match yesterday. If Marcos hadn’t been worn out from the semi-finals he might have had enough energy to win the finals on his own. At least my serves are getting better now. This coming week I’ll get in some practice with George and see if I can get my volleys to improve. I look forward to playing with George. I think he needs someone to engage him and force him to not mope around and wallow in depression. I think I make a reasonable antidepressant. LOL
Dennis and I have discussed inviting a 3rd cellie to move in from all the guys currently on A side. I ran some viable candidates by him, James and George, but he didn’t seem to like either of them but then I mentioned this guys named Josh and he latched onto him. Let me describe Josh: when someone says pencil necked geek, they mean Josh. LOL He is a scrawny-thin 27 yo who wears glasses and is quite a nerd. When I did my experiment with the Jolly Ranchers and then M&Ms he was the only one more interested in the statistical results than in finding out if he won. Ok, so he’s a fellow nerd. That’s why I thought of him as a possible cellie. I am relatively certain that Dennis liked the idea of Josh as a cellie because he would pose absolutely no physical threat to him. LOL
Once Dennis latched on to the prospect of Josh as a cellie he put the responsibility of broaching the subject with him on me. I wanted to be casual about it and wasn’t in a big rush because it was the weekend and there’s not going to be any new people coming in till potentially Monday but Dennis kept asking if I’d approached him so I broached the subject at yard on Sat. morning.
I peeled him off of the group he was walking with and we did laps together. I had just enough time to “pop the question” (haha) when George joined in walking laps with us so we couldn’t finish our discussion. Later that day at dayroom I tried to chat with him about it but once we got a table alone together and started talking someone would come over and sit down. It is virtually impossible to get any kind of privacy in here. *deep sigh* Later in the day we managed to get enough time without interruption to talk about it. I told him a bit about us: we’re very tidy, we go to bed at 10:30-11:30, I do yoga in the cell daily. He told me that he had been invited to move into cell 22 (he’s currently in 19 right above our cell) by this exceedingly quiet guy named Kyle. Kyle is a younger, skinny, nerdy guy too so they share a lot of common interest but Kyle has 2 other cellies already, one of whom is an older guy that both Kyle and Josh don’t like so that’s a complication. Plus Josh doesn’t want to move out of his cell right now in spite of his not getting along with his cellie Frank, a loud-mouth, in-your-business, 20-something. Frank has said he should be transferred out of here soon and Josh doesn’t want to leave his 3rd cellie, Brad, alone in the cell because “he’s going through some things.” Ain’t we all? LOL So Josh is a wash.
I had also mentioned that Blue wouldn’t make a bad cellie. He’s older, like us, so probably sleeps early. I’m not so sure he’s too quiet though because he’s quite a joker and clown when we’re all out, but he’s a porter so he’d be out of the cell a lot. I had only mentioned him in passing with no particularly positive reaction from Dennis but when I said Josh wasn’t a likely option Dennis went ahead and brought the subject up with Blue and then told me to follow up with him. Blue is hesitant because he has a bottom bunk and I think he wants to keep one. I would be willing to give up the bottom bunk, but Blue has also been here a long time so he is likely to get transferred out sooner than us. I’d prefer someone who came in after us. I’ll feel him out tomorrow though, just to see.
Saturday afternoon I thought I’d use some of my phone time to call someone that doesn’t come visit. No need to call mom, dad, McK, Justin or Roz anymore. If I did we wouldn’t have enough to talk about when they visit. *smile* So I scanned my list of phone numbers and decided that I’d call Quan. I can’t write him since he’s in Chicago for the summer, he hasn’t signed up for email, and he isn’t responsive to McK’s text so it seemed the only logical way I’d be able to get ahold of him. I’m pretty certain that if I don’t somehow establish contact before the Summer is up there won’t be any contact. It was mid afternoon on a Saturday so I thought he’d be free to take a call and much to my surprise he answered and accepted the call. At first he seemed confused as to whom it was. Whom else does he know that would call from in a correctional facility as the acceptance message states? I explained it was “Robert” and his reaction was “This is wierd.” I told him I hadn’t heard from him and was curious as to how his internship was going. He said he was at the internship now, in the middle of Saturday afternoon. I apologized for interrupting him at work, said he should sign up for the email system and said goodbye. Given his reaction I expect that will be the last time I will ever be in touch with him. It’s really sad to lose a friend but as my mother pointed out how many of my friends do I expect to maintain contact with over a 14 year period when we have little to no interaction or common activities to bind us. The harsh reality is that Roz is likely the only tai chi friend who would have that kind of dedication, and she’ll be gone in 2.5 years. Dave and Kathy might put in the effort to visit and stay in contact and since we re-established our friendship after an 11 year absence in CA I think we could again. Quan seems to have already written me off and he’s probably right. Why drag it out? If it’s going to fail why not end the friendship quickly. That seems to have been Mark and Erika’s call too. I really shouldn’t be trying so hard to force people to maintain contact. It’s unfair to drag someone else through my incarceration when in all likelihood there’s no prospect of maintaining a functioning friendship with most of them till I get out. Sad but true, and it’s best to face reality.
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