So, you may be wondering how we maintain a married relationship when my misfit toy is in prison. In the last post, we discussed phone calls. Today’s lesson is about snail mail and how it motivated MFT to learn to read and write—written in his own words.

Please remember, your mileage may vary, depending on your state, your prison, and your own path to literacy.

My First Letter

My first time writing a letter, when I was 16, was for a school project. I got a pen pal, Sunju, in South Korea. It was exciting but at the same time scary because I couldn’t read and write.

[I could read before I entered kindergarten, but my trauma—all ten ACEs—derailed me. In school, I was advanced each year even though I was a non-reader. After two years in 12^th grade, I stopped going to school—15 credits shy of a diploma. They said if I went to summer school, I’d be able to graduate. It’s mind-boggling that I could have graduated without knowing how to read and write.]

My cousin helped me write the first few letters. After that, it was hard to find the help I needed to correspond, so I gave up. I felt defeated. I still feel bad about Sunju’s last letter, where she asked if she did something wrong. Why wasn’t I writing her? That was my first and last time writing letters until I found myself in jail.

Please, Sir, I Want a Pen

2001 (age 30) I was still unable to read and write. That alone was challenging, but to have all this emotional separation and guilt on top of it . . . My first basic letter that I was able to put out—my very first letter had a tear drop on it that my family noticed. The blue lines were blurred.

The times when I was isolated in the system, I didn’t have any ability to write—there was nobody to help me—so I had to rely on the phone calls I could get. And, of course, at that time, phone calls were $15-$20 for 15 minutes.

When I was transferred to the general population of the jail, I would barter with people. I was forced to rely on them to help me read and write my letters. People were generous enough, but for the consistency I needed, I felt I needed to pay them for their time. It’s in my nature to value someone’s efforts, and it was realistic if I wanted their continued help. I didn’t want to rely on my family for money, so I returned to my childhood hustle of selling candy and commissary to be able to support my writing supplies and assistants.

The Pen is Mightier—If You Can Get One

When I got to prison, I was stuck in the same situation—needing to find a network and rely on people to help me with my reading and writing. And create resources so I can facilitate getting the supplies and assistance. Going to canteen to buy supplies was irregular and limiting. They say you can write as many letters as you want, but they only allow you to buy four pens and two writing tablets at a time, every 30 days. There’s no rollover if you miss a month. One time, I couldn’t go for seven months because of prison chaos.

Getting writing supplies by trade was not always easy. People who don’t value it don’t have it, and the people who do value it don’t want to let go of it. But I was always able to barter to get what I needed.[1]

At that time, mail could take 30 days or more to receive a letter. So back-and-forth corresponding was slow. My family would get my letters right away, but because of the prison’s red tape and clogged-up system, it would take 30+ days for their letters to get to me.

You may wonder, like other people have, why didn’t I just use a dictionary? The problem I had since school—if I can’t read and write, how can I decipher a dictionary? It was impossible for me. On top of it, with my dyslexia and other learning disabilities, I couldn’t just look at a word and write it; I had to go back and forth with every single letter. Then I’d second-guess myself and have to start over. It was tedious and time-consuming.

The Thesaurus in the Hole

2005 comes along, and I have a pretty good system going. I’m sending my kids each a letter once a week. Then trouble found me. Politics being what it was, I answered the call and I went to the hole because of it. Isolated. All my writing supplies and networking were gone. The hole is always lacking resources, and the ability to work with people is almost impossible, extremely limited—only your bunkie (if you’re lucky with a good one) and the people in your vent.

When most people are preparing to go to the hole, they’re packing their clavos[2] with tobacco, hot kites,[3] and perhaps drugs. Me, on the other hand, I was packing rolls of stamps.

By this time, I was more familiar with words and writing. One of my close pen pals sent me a magical thing—a dictionary/thesaurus. That changed the whole ball game for me! I had more time to myself to calm down my thoughts, and the biggest key was that I could go to the thesaurus and find a small, basic word like bad or good and look at the matching words and make sense of it. If I wanted to write evil—I can’t spell evil. But I know bad, so I’d go to bad, look at the corresponding words, and find one that looks/sounds like evil. I wouldn’t always get it right. (Ever seen that Friends episode where Joey uses the thesaurus? I was doing the same thing.)

It also helped that my friends and family just encouraged me to write phonetically, no matter if it was spelled right. That took the pressure off me. They were able to decipher what I meant. That gave me more confidence and practice. Slowly I advanced.

Carrots and Kool-Aid

Whenever I ran out of ink, because pens were even harder to get ahold of in the hole, I started making my own ink out of Kool-Aid, coffee, and M&Ms by rinsing off their dye. I’d clean out the residue from inside the pen and make a mixture to put inside. The thickness of the ink would affect its flow and darkness.

There was even one time where I was denied all my writing material, but I was committed  to never miss a week of writing to my kids. I made a dipping ink from coffee and Kool-Aid and used slivers of carrots as my quills to write on wax sandwich paper. Needless to say, the cop was very surprised when I had mail ready to send out, because there was no material for writing. I asked him for an envelope and he looked at me like, “I don’t know what you’re going to do with it.” 

Out of the hole in 2007. Now I have a war chest of writing materials and books with me at all times. I was a voracious letter writer, writing packed letters the whole day and mailing multiple letters every day.

Video Killed the Radio Star

2010—I broke the rules and acquired a cell phone. That opened up a whole new world to me. I could text message and started collecting my first pen pals since Sunju. I found them on a pen pal group on Facebook. But it took a lot of convincing to get someone to write me. People don’t really want to write a prisoner, particularly a male.

2012—My first Write A Prisoner ad.[4] It removed the stigma and the effort of having to overly convince someone why they should write me. I didn’t have to defend myself.

Then came 2014 and getting my first legal digital tool—my Union Supply tablet. Although the U-tab did not have the writing tools that I needed, I found workarounds. I found loopholes where I could write and save it, to be able to copy it onto paper. There was also a basic dictionary and cut-and-paste features. My letter writing became more complex and efficient.

Then 2017. The writing tools were better with the new JPay tablet and emails. There was also a better word processor. But just like “video killed the radio star,” the text messages killed my letter-writing desires.[5]

And texting’s an entirely different blog post.

[1] Dolly says he has a golden tongue!

[2] Prison lingo for a hidey-hole

[3] Secret, little prison notes to pass along (no cops allowed)

[4] This is how MFT and Dolly met.

[5] Dolly missed out!