No one realizes how cold concrete can be until something has gone wrong. Some find solace from a fever or a biting hangover in the cold. Others find a cruel discomfort, a byproduct of acute self-awareness.
Surrounded by painted cinder block and forty of my newest friends, I sat rubbing the cold, concrete floor of a holding cell in Richmond City Jail. I sat wondering what my great grandfather would look like if he could see me. Thoughts of his approval often hung in the back of my mind. When lifting my face off a mirror, when emptying my stomach onto the dorm room floor, and waking up wherever the night before left me.
He was a man that survived D-Day and had liberated two concentration camps. He was humble and happy. He and my father were the only two men that molded me into who I became. He had long since passed, but I always saw his beaming face in every destructive thing I did. I always became racked with guilt.
Like everything I did in life, I glad-handed my way through everyone, laughing and joking with them. In their eyes, I became the ring-leader of whatever I was involved with. In my eyes, I became brightly colored nothingness, devoid of substance or feeling, feigning personality.
A skinny, white guard called out my name. I stripped down, standing naked just outside the holding cell. I lifted my testicles then bent over and coughed for the guard, which would be become the first in a long line of uniformed men that year that would end up the business end of a future attorney.
I had been arrested for distribution of marijuana by the DEA, or the Drug Enforcement Administration for the uninitiated. I attended a lily-white, all-men’s college in Virginia, where men are men and women are guests. A gentile and pastel Valhalla comprised of long days of rhetoric and philosophy, followed by longer nights of Adderall and bourbon.
Little did I know when I signed away my financial future to Sallie Mae to go to this place, that I would end up perp-walking in front of my fraternity brothers, because I sold almost an ounce of weed to an undercover informant.
Following my arrest, the reality of what I would become didn’t set in. I had people around me that gave their lives to make sure I pulled myself out of the mental mire I had jumped headfirst into. It took months, fights, tears, and one last fit of self-pity to shake me out of my dream world and into reality. I grew up in an instant. An instant that was not possible without the help of my family (Looking at you, Mom, Dad, Pook, and Gamma) and other people I had met along the way. (Thanks, David, Bo, and Duke).
Ten years later, I look back and see how getting arrested and being forced to serve time in federal prison, was the best thing that ever happened to me. Afterwards, I graduated college, graduated from law school, and now I’m an attorney. I have been #blessed with a smart, loyal, passionate, beautiful wife (Love you, Babe), and an adorable baby girl (when you’re old enough to read this, Surprise! And I love you!). My story is one of millions. Getting arrested for dumb shit is the easy part, and it can happen to anyone. Don’t let that keep you down. Life is going to be harder, no doubt, but it’s not the end of the world.
There are millions of people with the same or greater amount of wisdom than I have, Wisdom earned by facing life’s obstacles, not necessarily by overcoming them. We have seen things that no one should see or deal with problems no one should have to face. It gives us perspective and sympathy for those who have never faced adversity. The cliché “never judge a book by its cover” comes to mind. You never know someone’s story without getting to know them first.
You may discover that that person already knows how cold the concrete can be.
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