Religious Advantages

I’m thinking of converting to Judaism. Seriously. Well, sort of. The thought occurred to me last Friday in the cafeteria.

The meal that night was a hideous one. A bologna sandwich and chips does not make a proper dinner, especially when you’re getting the awful turkey bologna that the prison is so fond of serving. It’s so disgusting that I just give the meat away and eat a soy milk cheese sandwich with a bit of lettuce and tomato. I don’t care for the off-brand mayo they serve either, so I was going to have to swallow it dry. Yum.

I was wondering for the thousandth time why I didn’t just skip the cafeteria and fix up a ramen soup in my cell while I looked for a place to park my tray and eat. Even though the meal that night was crap, there was still no shortage of inmate partakers. I guess when all you make is six bucks a month, you can’t afford to turn your nose up at bad lunchmeat.

I finally found an empty seat on the side of the cafeteria where I normally take my meals. In prison, people don’t just sit anywhere in the cafeteria. The chow hall is a place of extreme racial division. Blacks sit with blacks, Mexicans sit with Mexicans, and so on. Although I’m in a place where the inmates don’t strictly enforce that rule, occasionally people will get complaints if they’re in “the wrong part of town.” I prefer to just avoid all that by following the established mores.

I parked myself at a table where three people were busy chowing away. I knew one of them from the rec yard, so I greeted him.

“Oh, hey Joe, what’s up?” he asked me.

“Nothing much. Just suffering in prison and eating dog food.”

He chuckled. “I hear ya, man. Hey! What happened to your bologna?”

“I never eat the bologna,” I said as I arranged the lettuce on my sandwich. “I always give it away.”

“You’re gonna eat it like THAT?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Well, if you’re going to eat a no-meat sandwich, at least put some of THIS on it.” He produced a plastic jar from his coat pocket. “Do you like horseradish?”

“Where did you get THAT? The commissary doesn’t sell horseradish!”

“Jewish SPO just came in,” he explained. “There’s a big list of stuff they can buy once a year for Passover.”

I like horseradish a LOT, but I didn’t want to use his once he said that he could only buy it yearly. He encouraged me to take his bottle anyway.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

I squeezed the bottle and dropped a miserly little smear of white on my bread. I doubted it was even enough to taste it, but I didn’t want to be rude and use half the bottle.

“Dude, you can put on more than that!” My friend snatched the bottle out of my hand and squeezed a liberal amount onto my bun.

“Thanks!”

“You’re welcome, Joe.”

The horseradish made ALL the difference. It magically turned a bad meal into a good one. The heat and flavor covered up the taste of the nasty cheese, as well as reminded me of the free world. I thought I had died and gone to Arby’s. Horsey sauce for the win!

I started searching the black market for a bottle of horseradish since that day, but I can’t find any. Since horseradish is a once-a-year flavor on the compound, it’s highly sought after. Most inmates are unwilling to part with any of their supply, and the few that WILL are beginning to charge ten bucks for a two-dollar bottle. Forget that.

The only way that an inmate can place his yearly order of horseradish with the police is to register as a Jew with the compound chaplain. I hate to be dishonest, but it seems that certain faiths get extra goodies in prison. Anyone remember the double-meal Ramadan “fast” in Atlanta? I’ve heard of other people registering in the chapel just to get this stuff, and I may follow suit. I’ll even attend services and pay a tithe if I have to, but gimme my horsey sauce!  ^_^