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Voices on the Page
| Title: | Well, it started as a hobby |
| Author: | Alan Horrocks |
| Theme: | friends, family |
| Story: | I was just sitting by my computer, and letting my brain churn up a random idea for something to search the internet for. In this modern age, and with the internet so widely available, I suspect that this activity is hardly uncommon. At this juncture, two separate thoughts clashed together in the mental void, and something major happened. It all started innocently enough with an email from a friend who I had met through the internet. The ensuing train of thought got me wondering something along the lines of, ‘do people still have pen friends like children used to?’ I know that some of these relationships lasted many years, and some people became lifelong friends this way. The second thought was caused by the recollection of a recent television programme about people who write to Death Row Inmates in America. I just allowed the two thoughts to mingle freely at some level of consciousness in my mind, and ZZZAPPPP a bolt of lightening was emitted from my logic circuitry, that was so bright that it nearly set my hair on fire. My hands began typing “Death Row Pen pals” into a search engine, and I was away. I trawled through page upon page of pleas and stories. So many people! So much tragedy! I really felt for some of the people. I accept the fact that for each one, there is probably a family out there somewhere that lost a Son or daughter, or Mother or Father. But those on death row have families as well, and they too, have to live with the tragedy. I read page after page, and wrote to a couple of them. It is not really difficult to write to them, for once you have started the letter, after a sentence (bad choice of words, I know) or two, it is just like meeting somebody in a Pub or on a Bus, and just saying “Hi” to them. Then I just took the letters to the Post Office, and sent them via Airmail, and began the waiting game. After a couple of months, nothing happened, but undeterred, I trawled through the Pen Pal pages again, and chose another person to write to. I wrote about who I am, where I live and what I do. Just a few details like that, nothing fancy at all. I posted that and waited again. A few weeks later, I received a letter from the prisoner I had just written to. He told be he was thankful that his plea for friendship had been heard. It seemed that when I told him what did for a living (working in a factory, attaching waistbands to incontinence underwear), he thought it was funny. As I had raised a laugh in a place like that, I felt really good as well! (If you wonder why it takes so long to get a reply, this is because when you write to a prisoner, the prison has to read it to make sure there is nothing bad, illegal or anything like that in it, and this can take a week or two, so patience is needed here.) Also, I had not asked him about the crime he was convicted of, or his guilt or innocence, he knew (quite rightly) that I was interested in him as a person, not as a criminal. I started to write every week, as indeed I still do, and thus began a friendship that gets closer and stronger all the time. It was months before my new friend told me about the crime he was convicted of, and without going into details, it was not of a sexual nature, or anything against Women or Children. Even when I knew all this, it in no way changed my view of him, as it was never about that anyway. Since I have been doing this, I have discovered so much about the American criminal justice system and the day to day lives of the people it has in its grip that I am and will always be grateful for my life in the U.K. Now, I no longer think of my friend as a prisoner, just as a friend who lives overseas. We always seem to make each other laugh, and tell each other about our likes and dislikes, about our families and everything that friends tell each other about. So it is all about friendship, it is not about the rights and wrongs of the death penalty, (that one is a discussion for another time). As for the cost, well, I send two or three pages of A4 a week and it usually only costs about eighty pence! So I would say, just go for it! You can learn so much, you can bring light into one of the darkest places on earth. Yes, there are some who want money to fight their cases, and you have no way of knowing anything about the people you write to, but rest assured, the chances of them breaking out and crossing the Atlantic, just to find you are, well, not very likely are they? My friend even sent me his Mother’s address, and so now I write to her as well and I can honestly say that I have made some good friends. So just choose one, the addresses are freely available, and write in an honest and light hearted way and see if they respond. There are men and women of every race and creed. There are stories, histories good times and bad times to read about. But when it comes right down to it, they are just ordinary people, and none of us is totally innocent of all charges, are we? I will summarise by saying that I feel privileged to have been given a glimpse into the mind and life of a man who is in a situation that I would find unbearable. But I am also privileged to be able to say that I have shone a light into a dark place and answered when a stranger called “Help!”. To conclude, I wish to than Dodie Smith and Pippa Packer from Link Into Learning, for their invaluable help and encouragement to write, and to the to the whole idea of adult literacy training I say; My life is changed and I have changed the lives of others. |
