Ask the reformed criminal.

In My Humble Opinion
21

Yup. A couple of years ago a girl I knew had been kicked out of her home by her parents. She stayed with me for the night, and left before I got up the next morning. She had taken an expensive book bag, a playstation 2, all of the games for it, and a dvd player. It wasn’t a nice feeling at all, and it’s a good reminder whenever I get tempted to go back to my old ways. I didn’t confront her about it, as I figured if she needed money badly enough to steal from a friend that I’d let it go. I later learned she sold it all for bus tickets to Alabama.

I’ve never had anything of mine burned though. I imagine I wouldn’t like it one bit.

22

Actually, watching it done up close by a person you know is very different from watching it done on a stage. I’m saying this because I have much personal experience with younger teens doing this and posting it on Youtube, using the photos as their cell phone wallpaper, etc. It’s a very popular fad, and you must see that having an older mentor show you the act up close can have bad results. You’re doing it to fulfill your own needs, so any judgment you make on its benefits is going to be clouded by your desires. Why take a chance playing with fire with kids when you don’t need to, except for fulfilling your own pyromaniacal compulsions?

23

Unless I missed it…What is your education level?

BTW, I was raised by petty criminals and most of my family thinks very little of violating most of the laws on the books. I literally ran away at 18 and went to college by working as a janitor. Then joined the Army, I am the black sheep of my family.

24

You bring up a fair point. I wasn’t thinking of what kind of stuff they might do as teens. I’ll have to reconsider what I’m showing my nieces.

25

I dropped out of school in 11th grade when I couldn’t take the boredom anymore. I had been in one school at the beginning of 9th grade, in advanced placement classes. They challenged me, or in some cases were at least tough enough to keep my interest.

At the end of the first semester I transferred to a school that didn’t offer advanced placement classes, so I took the next best thing, which were college prep classes. During my 10th grade year I was home schooled due to medical issues. At the beginning of 11th grade, they stuck me in tech prep classes, since I planned on going to technical school when I graduated. I quickly realized that in this school, tech prep basically meant stick all the dumb students together. I tried attending these classes, despite the most advanced thing I was given to do in any was coloring a picture of aquatic life, in environmental sciences.

I went to my guidance councilor and she wouldn’t get my classes changed. Neither would the assistant principle, the principle, the BoE, or the superintendent. I couldn’t take the boredom anymore, so I dropped out. That was the second biggest mistake of my life. Unfortunately I didn’t realize it until it was to late to go back.

Since then I’ve been reading anything I get my hands on, from Plato to Hawkins. When I can get steady work again, I’m going to get my GED and enroll in college.

26

What was your biggest mistake, if you don’t mind saying?

Very interesting thread, by the way. Thank you for sharing!

27

What was the most serious crime you committed that you got away with?

28

Leaving the love of my life in New Jersery to return to Ga. Had I known it would’ve led to us splitting up later down the road, I would’ve stayed. All the crimes I’ve committed comes in at #3.

29

You mention in another thread that you work (or have worked) at Dollar General. Assuming they do criminal background checks, how did you get that job?

30

Do you know if they put the baseball cards that went down your pants back on the shelf?

31

Back then, they only cared if I had been convicted of anything. Since I’ve never been convicted due to charges either being dropped or settling things out of court, I was cleared to work there.

I don’t know if they’re still that loose with their policy now or not.

32

  1. What’s your biggest success in life so far?

  2. Surely you recognize that there are a lot of successful, happy people out there who do not have the same approach to the law and work that you do. (Just one example, I think most people I know would have handled the issue with the manager in training much differently, without either making confrontational remarks or being angry about taking someone’s orders.) Do you see those people as being different than you? Better or worse? Why do you suppose there are such differences?

  3. What’s your dream job?

33

Is prison really that bad?

34

They didn’t. I opened them before putting them down my pants, since I thought store alarms were set off by the bar-codes. I hadn’t heard of rfid tags back then.

35

  1. I’d probably have to say teaching myself enough about computers to get contractor work from the local repair store. I’m good enough that I can charge rates similar to what geek squad charges.

  2. This is the hardest of your questions. I suppose it has to do with how I approach life. I’ve always questioned authority, as far back as I can remember. Whether that authority came from god, my teachers, my parents, or the law. Sometimes this leads me to conclusions others don’t reach, such as it being alright to take from others, or burning abandoned property. The reasoning behind the former being that if someone is wealthy enough to afford something I want, they can afford to replace it, which makes it alright; for the latter, the property obviously isn’t worth anything to anyone, or it wouldn’t be abandoned, so no one will mind me burning it. I’ve since realized how faulty such logic is. The way I handled that manager in training was a combination of my questioning of authority again, combined with anger issues. I have an incredibly short fuse, and it’s real easy to set me off. Even needscoffee saying that something I was doing was idiotic was enough to set me off.

  3. This is the easiest of your questions for me to answer. My dream job would be a gourmet chef in my own restaurant. Realistically, either a general contractor or retail manager. I’ve got decades of experience in the former, as I grew up on construction sites and remodeling jobs. The latter I just have a knack for, as I learned when I worked at Dollar General. I wouldn’t mind being an author of novels either, but I know how hard that is to get into, much less be successful at. Especially with writing skills as poor as mine, which is why I want to go to college when I get steady work again.

36

Ouch. My daughter and I play with fire sometimes (burn her hair from the comb and brush after combing, create fire balls, etc). I have taken a lot of time to teach her to have a healthy respect for fire, and I trust her not to exploit the fact that I give her permission to use fire. We started playing with it when she was about 9. She’s 11 now.

I agree that it’s not a good idea to be Bozo the Fire Juggler around random kids, but I hope you’ll agree that it’s ok to ‘show off fire feats’ to one’s own child.

37

I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been to prison. I have been to jail a couple of times though. The longest stretch I did was a month while waiting a court hearing. During that time, there weren’t any fights, hardly any arguments, and no one tried to force me into anything. I was propositioned a time or two, but nothing happened when I refused.

The worst thing had to be the boredom. The dorm I was in had 1 tv, with horrid reception. We could get a local channel from 8am to 11am, and that was it. The rest of the time was occupied by reading, talking, playing cards, and chores, with an hour of outside time. During that hour we could walk, play football, or basketball. Our day began at 530, when we were served breakfast, which was usually pancakes or oatmeal. We were given 2 hours of that, then chores were assigned. Those could last anywhere from 15 minutes to 8 hours, depending on what you were assigned. After chores were done, we were pretty much left on our own until lunch at 12, supper at 6, then lights out at 1130. The only variation from the daily schedule were visitation days, and church days, which I opted out of. We could sleep whenever we liked during the day, and a lot of us did that.

During that stretch, I was housed in D Dorm, which is where the violent criminals were held. People who had committed assault, rapists, murderers, arsonists, etc. Some were there for the first time, some were repeat criminals, some hadn’t had their day in court yet, and some had already been convicted, but were waiting to be transferred to a prison. I fully expected there to be some kind of trouble, from all the horror stories I heard, but it was nothing like that. Ignoring the fact that we had very little freedom, it was a lot like a waiting room in a doctors office.

The biggest thing I had to get used to was using the bathroom in front of others. Urinating wasn’t so bad, it was defecating that was the problem. We all gave each other as much privacy as we could, but during the day the doors to the cells were kept open, which put all the toilets in plain view. We had a system for this though. The cells were on two levels, so the last cell on the left, top row was designated the “shitter” during the day. That cell was left empty, and that’s where we all did our business. At night was different, as we were 3 to a cell, with the new guy having a mattress on the floor straight across from the toilet. We all tried our best to hold it until the shitter was open, but that wasn’t always an option. Especially the time we all got served bad tacos.

Oh, and stainless steel toilets should be considered cruel and unusual punishment when the ambient temperature of the room is 54 F.

38

How much trouble do you have finding regular employment with your record? Do you think this will get better after you have a college degree and your background is further in the past?

I’ve never been convicted of anything, but to me I think I fear the inability (or at least huge difficulty) of finding steady, decent paying employment far more than I’d fear probation or jail time. Then again, I can’t find that anyway.

39

Not so much asking questions as commenting, but you dont really appear to be a proper villain from your ansewers to other peoples questions. It does’nt appear to be that you did crime for any personal gain, no bank robbing, no cat burglaring etc.

It more sounds like you were at the actual fork between the dodgy side and the reformed.

Declan

40

Did your arson have a sexual component? I ask because I went to school with a guy who is now a fire marshal, he told me once that a lot of arsonists find sexual gratification in watching the fire and also the firefighters.