Life of Adventure

There is no Goat Cheese in Jail

By on Monday, January 28, 2013

   
    This last week I received some absolutely shocking news.

    Someone I knew had committed a crime and had been arrested. This person, who I thought I knew, had a criminal history I knew nothing about and is now going to spend a lot of his youth in jail.

    He deserves this jail time, don’t get me wrong, and I do believe he is guilty.

    I’m a Republican who completely supports the death penalty and I think, even if our jails are overcrowded, criminals deserve to serve time for crimes they commit.

     This last week all I can think about is how sad I am for this guy and what a waste of one’s youth.

    Look at your own life and could you possibly imagine spending the next ten years of it locked up in prison?

    I think about all the little things that we living in this society take for granted every day.

    I think of walking on the beach and feeling the sand beneath my toes. I think about drinking a cold wheat beer and watching sports with friends, laughing and catching up during happy hour. I think of holding my friends new baby and watching my friends children grow up before my eyes.

    Yesterday I hiked up a mountainside, sweat dripping down my back on a cold January day. As a Red Tailed Hawk dipped among the pines over head I gazed down at a frozen lake a thousand feet below me in an aspen forest, than I went home and baked up a shepherd’s pie from scratch and spent a snowy evening watching movies and drinking wine.

    Even the days that I go to work I think about the little things, joking with co workers, picking out my food at a grocery store, driving home at night during a beautiful  pink and red sunset.

     These are little things that we all take for granted every day.

     Can you imagine never having children because you missed out on your thirties and meeting that special some one for you, while being locked up behind bars?

     Think about that degree you had been working on so hard at the local university the last few years, all those late nights studying and mid terms and the dollars you handed over for text books.

     Can you imagine spending your fortieth birthday behind bars?

     I think about elderly family members who are too old to travel and for people who are sitting in jail, not being able to see a grandma or grandpa or even parent again. It is so sad to think of the years wasted while this certain individual is sitting in jail.

     It makes me so sad; what a waste of one’s youth.

     These are the thoughts overcrowding my head in the last week.

    It makes me want to enjoy every moment of this life.

    When a coworker asks me why am I so happy to be at work today, I just smile. I am so happy that I have a job to go to and I can drive up winding mountain highways to my cabin in the forest tonight. I feel blessed to have family and friends to spend my days with. Even eight hour shifts at work don’t seem so bad, because when the day is done, I can go home to my cabin and eat goat cheese.

    There is no goat cheese in jail.

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Comments

  1. stephaniesaye.com

    Hi Amber. I had never thought of jail in this way. Wow, makes me very grateful for the life I have. I also loved the description of where you live. Sounds divine and so cleansing for the soul. Namaste.

  3. mod mom beyond indiedom

    It does make you think, doesn’t it? A friend of mine who I went to acting school with was sentenced to life in prison a couple of years ago for stabbing his girlfriend to death. You may have heard about it on the news, it was a big story. I couldn’t believe it. He was a comedian for crying out loud. I never knew that dark side of him, thank god. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about how his entire life was over. His life seemed to hold such promise. He’d been in a popular movie, his career was going in a good direction. But now he was going to spend the rest of his days behind bars. So incredibly sad. That said, I really liked your title and being a lover of all things having anything slightly to do with goat cheese, I will be living a clean life, ma’am. I’m not taking a chance at living my life without the stuff. 😉

  4. Marcy

    That is so sad to think about. One of my students was on probation one time, and then he did something else wrong and went right to jail, and I never saw him again.

  6. Gia

    It’s so true – and so many people are in prison for relatively minor (in my opinion) crimes (nonviolent/nonvictim). So sad.

  10. Dana

    Great perspective, and one that most people don’t really think about. The idea of prison usually gets thrown around in a political way, but rarely ever a human way.

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