How would you react?

Here is a piece of prison mentality that blows my mind. I will do my best to set the scene and mood before going into details. Well this particular night, the lights on the tier went off ten minutes early around 10:20 p.m. This is probably the first night I have seen a lot of people in bed and comfortable before 11 p.m., solely because it is the first night in a while, where it is noticeably cool. Still before I tell you of the prison mentality, I must tell you about the concrete floors, metal tables on the tier. It’s impossible to drag pretty much anything on these floors without making some kind of noise. Sometimes noise on the tier is bearable, and sometimes it is completely rude. Well, having the metal tables dragged on concrete…is never bearable. OK, so as I’m sound asleep, and probably so is 98 percent of the tier. Suddenly, I thought I was dreaming of my 6th grade teacher Mrs. Sokol scraping her sharp nails on the blackboard. Or better yet, the scene from “Men In Black” when Will Smith is taking the test with all the other candidates, then drags the table over to his chair to lean on making a loud screeching/scraping sound. However, I realize I am awakened, along with everyone else on the tier, to one of our fellow inmates dragging the one metal table from the middle of the tier into his area-- at 3 am in the morning! Just like in the movie, everyone just looked in disbelief that someone would show such disregard for those around him. That’s just half of it though.
Anyway, the piece of prison mentality that I have heard numerous times, in different ways, to justify ignorant behavior, occurred when one of my fellow inmates asked the guy, why he was dragging a table in the middle of the night while everyone was fast asleep. His response, “This is *************prison.” Once again, saved by the “prison card,” which means, I can act however I want and my excuse is that this is jail. That’s the common PIECE of prison mentality and I guess my PEACE of prison mentality is: Why can’t we change the behaviors and attitudes of what our environment is telling us? Why do our surroundings determine how we act? I know it’s prison and I know where I’m at, but I won’t allow my attitude and behaviors to be affected because “this is prison.” This time should be a blessing and an opportunity for every inmate alike to really evaluate how they were/are living. We, as inmates, cannot change our circumstances or situations, but we can better them. We have a choice every single day with regards to how we will react to our surroundings. We can’t change our confinement, but we can change ourselves, and sometimes that changes everything.
Just realized it’s Friday the 13th, and the only significance with that is I was born on a Friday, the 13th.
~~~THERE ARE TWO GREAT MOMENTS IN A PERSON’S LIFE. THE FIRST IS WHEN YOU ARE BORN. THE SECOND IS WHEN YOU DISCOVER WHY YOU ARE BORN. ~~~(Attitude is Everything p. 118)