Weird Dreams are a part of the Prison Experience.

Have you ever had a dream where an overgrown housecat is clinging for dear life to a pair of shorts that you are actively wearing? No claws in your thigh, just a cat foreleg shoved awkwardly under the material so that it can join its paws together in that classic "I'm not letting go!" posture.
Oh, and you're fighting for your life against something you can't see at the same time, and its blows pack a wallop.

How about a dream where the line at the grocery store window is long and slow because there's only one checkstand open window, and you're worried about disrupting a formal count while buying food? And then you hear the dreaded "Oh, honey, can I get a uhhhhhhhhhhHhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHH --"
(pop "Count clear!")

Or one where three people you only know from prison are trying to build a house out of discarded prison clothes, lockers, and knock-off Crocs-style footwear (and failing miserably at it, I might add)?

Or one where you stick your hand in your pocket to grab a payment method and start cursing because you can't find the three packs of chili and two ramen that add up to the $15 that you owe -- someone replaced it with this weird rectangle of plastic with a strange square at one end?

How about the one where someone nicked a bar of Irish Spring soap out of your bedroom and you come unglued, unhinged, and maybe even bellicose over it?
(You have another 41 bars, though -- there was a good deal on it at the window, 3 for $2.49; it's normally $2.61 for one bar. You also keep calling the act of going grocery shopping "going to the window".)

Welcome? to Prison.

If your dreams resemble these, you may be someone who has had experience on this side of the concertina wire, and I see you, friend.

Conversations I've had with others in my few years sequestered have broached the dream subject, revealing this weird undercurrent that happens in our minds.
Sometimes it leads to awake overthinking that may or may not be productive, like wondering just what does a prison do with its worn out textiles? Do they have a recycling process? Or is it straight to the Landfill, do not pass Go, do not collect 155 packs of ramen and three packets of Equal (which is $200.01, I promise you)?

Overthinking like a tray of beans

I want to go back to the overthinking bit:

Recently on my way to my Vocational class, I remarked to a guy who attends our Buddhist congregation: "Look at all this food that goes to waste, while our country just cut off SNAP [benefits] to over 40 million people. How is this right?"
We were passing our open air carts with 90-something trays each, parts of which were unconsumed -- there were uneaten brownies and slices of bread on top of them. These were on the move back downhill to the Food Services department to have their contents banged out into a garbage bin.
(I may have nicked a brownie that was flat and crunchy, reminiscent of Brownie Brittle.)

That was to become the theme of a dream a couple of nights hence, where people were coming to prison solely to have access to three meals a day. It dredged up a memory of a conversation I had when I first came to prison, where someone told me that some people come to this Hell realm just for the guarantee of food, of a place to lay their head, access to Medical without running up a debt they're never going to repay. I didn't believe it then, but it's been a couple of years and I can see that being more true than anything now.

Food here's disgusting and often served outside ServSafe™ guidelines, but the upside (as I was told in my dream)? "It comes on a tray that ain't shaped like a garbage can lid or had roach bait sprinkled on it. And I get it three times a day fo' free, in a more dignified manner than jumping into a dumpster."

Medical care here can be a swing and a miss, but a different dream guy tells me, "I gots 30 pills. They gots ta see me, even tho I can't pay fo' it."

The worst part was that it took me a while to realize I was dreaming, for it to become a lucid dream, but it brought to me a rather profound realization.

Food in Security

For a not insignificant number of these people, the three trays we get daily are the closest they have ever been to food security. I used to think that people who would hang around the cart for returning trays were vultures, eating whatever people would, ahem carry on their trays to dispose. I've had to tune my thinking to be different, to find compassion instead of condescension for those who do -- it's not like there's food floating in the air, waiting for harvest.

A last thought

Perhaps I am having the longest weird dream, and when I wake up outside these walls, these realizations about people I've had here in prison will remain, and I can find a way to do more for others instead of being selfish.