I Was a Reluctant Guest

by Dr Kenneth Shelby Armstrong, Dr. Kenneth Shelby Armstrong

The words we use to label each other makes all the difference in the world. Who would ever think of naming a child CLOD, or FLUG? Those words just do not grace any subject, let alone that of a sweet innocent baby. The government has not yet fathomed this simple truth, so it provides residents of prisons with terrible monikers like—convict, detainee, inmate, jailbird, con, lifer, or yardbird. It’s a terrible thing to do to a nice human being who has been only slightly errant in his or her behavior. Now, I speak with some authority, having been in that situation myself. When I was invited to inhabit one of those institutions, I rebelled at such careless nomenclature. I simply refused to accept derisive descriptions, and so I re-framed my position by adopting the term GUEST. I was a RELUCTANT GUEST of the government, but the term GUEST was something I could live with. One of the great benefits of such an arrangement is that the government gives each GUEST a generous amount of time to use for spiritual contemplation, personal development, and philosophical exploration. Obviously such a generous benefit can be squandered, but only a fool would do that. In my case, I decided to use this gift of time to master a craft which could benefit me for the rest of my life. I decided to improve my writing skills. Yes, it’s true. I learned to write in prison. I don’t mean I learned my ABCs—I mean, I began to learn how to write a story and compose a poem. Now I was not a complete novice in this regard. Before I entered prison, I had earned a master’s degree in philosophy, a divinity degree in theology, a doctorate in the Sociology of Religion, and another doctorate in Higher Education. I had written thousands of pages in those academic pursuits, yet I did not know how to write anything that the average person would want to read. I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to go about it. I met John Collette in the Yard at La Tuna Federal Correction Center in El Paso, Texas. La Tuna was a most unpleasant place to be. John disliked the ambience even more than I did—he was from Alaska, and the government had invited him to stay with them for 25 years. He left a thriving marijuana business to pursue the opportunities offered by the Bureau of Prisons. John was a literary kind of person and spent as much of his time as he could in the prison library. He read books that I had never heard about, and he read me passages of a manuscript that he was working on. I shared a couple of stories that I had written, and I could see that my degrees did not carry much weight with him. In a short time he became my mentor. One day he loaned me a book and told me to read it as soon as possible. The book was WRITING FOR STORY, by Jon Franklin, a double Pulitzer Prize winner. The book simply blew my mind. I had never read anything like it. In fact, I had never read a book on writing in my life. I was whammed doubly when I discovered that Jon Franklin was from my home town and we had lived there during the same period. I had the creepy feeling that the book and my friend John were some kind of message to me, and I had better acknowledge their coincidence. One day he loaned me a book and told me to read it as soon as possible. The book was WRITING FOR STORY, by Jon Franklin, a double Pulitzer Prize winner. The book simply blew my mind. I had never read anything like it. In fact, I had never read a book on writing in my life. I was whammed doubly when I discovered that Jon Franklin was from my home town and we had lived there during the same period. I had the creepy feeling that the book and my friend John were some kind of message to me, and I had better acknowledge their coincidence. So I wrote this book. It's a memoir, biography, historical analysis, and Inspirational commentary. Enjoy and profit.

236 pages, Paperback

Published November 30, 2015