Top things for kids to do while visiting their stepfather in jail

So, I had a very dysfunctional childhood and as outrageous as it sounds, it is also humorous.  I didn’t realize that my stories were so entertaining until recently when a friend of mine here in LA said, you are wasting these stories, you need to get them out.  She suggested I do a one woman show where I just tell the audience my family stories in my “cute little southern accent”.  Well, I don’t know about the performance part but I do know that talking about my mom is quite a crowd pleaser so I will start with just one of the events of my childhood and then maybe continue to post more later.  I swear that everything I’m about to write is true and if you enjoy it, there is a lot more where this came from.  Also, try to see this story as funny even though if you have children, you may not think it’s appropriate.

When I was about 9 or 10, my mom was married to a convict.  He was actually what you call a trustee in the law enforcement center.  This means that he slept in a type of dorm room instead of a cell.  He was the cook of the jail and was allowed to leave to buy groceries, pick up deliveries, etc.  He was in for several years for allegedly shooting at a cop during a drug bust although he claims to have shot into the air and not at a police officer.  He was a very nice man, who always bought us presents and we had a glorioius time visiting him at the law enforcement center.  My father forbid my mom to take my younger sister and I there but we liked it so she took us anyway.  There was so much to do there!  We could play with the bloodhounds, there were two of them (I can’t remember their names)  and it was fun to see them sniff a cloth and then we would run with them as they went to  find their targets.  There was also another dog Dixie, the drug sniffing dog, I always felt sorry for her because she stayed mostly in a cage with a marijuana plant just outside of her reach and a fan constanly blowing the aroma of the plant into her cage.  Perhaps one of our favorite things to do was work out in the inmates gym.  Now these inmates did not have to wear orange jumpsuits, they wore regular clothes and some of them were even allowed to go to work in the day and come back to the jail at night.  So these weren’t really hardened criminals, most of them were in there on drug charges. 

These inmates were also in charge of cleaning the confiscated vehicles.  If you were lucky enough to be there while they were doing this, you might leave with some fuzzy dice or cassette tapes.  We came back with bags of goodies  formerly belonging to drug dealers.  But perhaps the best part of these Sunday visits was the fantastic meal we got.  He was an awesome cook and he always made a great dinner for us, especially since Mom didn’t cook a lot.

Out of all the men that Mom has been married to, I think I liked him the best.  I didn’t actually know they were married until years after the marriage was annulled.  At the time, I thought they were just “dating” but it turned out they were just friends and she had married him so that he could get out on the weekends to visit his family.  So every weekend he got to leave but he had to be back on Sunday afternoon and that is when we would visit.  To my sister and I, those were good times.  It was a fun, family thing to do every week.