Our Return From OZ: or, “How can I ever thank you enough?”

(In which a two-page class exercise on using humor to diffuse stressful situations lends legitimacy to the showing of The Wizard of Oz to adult male prisoners in a medium-security walled facility….)

Last night, we completed a class exercise called “Popular Media and Its Uses in the Identification of Countervailing Humor Types.”  The countervailing humor types are constructive and destructive humor.  This particular use was in the form of a Blu-Ray disk.  And the specific medium used was an educational film for therapeutic purposes called The Wizard of Oz.

Prior to spinning the disk at 300 rpm, I distributed the above-mentioned exercise, containing 11 questions about how Dorothy & her companions use humor in dealing with the stressful situations they need to overcome.  I wasn’t sure how these men would take to answering questions while the lights were low and they were in the process of viewing a beloved movie that most of them haven’t seen since their childhoods.

But most complied, and some of their responses were spot-on, and even surprising.  One question reads:  “What do you consider to be the funniest spoken line in the film?  Does the line make you laugh out loud?  Is the humor constructive or destructive?”  One participant responded thus:  “The funniest line is when Dorothy says, ‘Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.’  It did not make me LOL.  The humor is destructive–shows her stupidity.”  This response made ME laugh out loud.  Stupid?  Dorothy?  Whaddaya DO with something like this?  The individual in question is from a country on the African continent, so the cultural gap may explain most of it.  But he reports that he’s lived here nearly twenty years, and he’s not even out of his 20s yet.  “Aw shucks, folks, I’m speechless!”  The following day, he tells me this was his first time seeing the movie.  That, in my view, explains it all.  We who have grown up with the film have emotionally invested in these characters.  What would we have thought of them if we were seeing the movie for the first time in our late 20s?  AND through the lens of a cultural gap?  Probably the same way as this young man.  We’d see Dorothy Gale as a stupid farm kid.  When I tell him, however, that Judy Garland was playing a character much younger than her actual age, that gives him pause.  “OK, now it all makes sense,” he says.  Finally.

To the question of How Uncle Henry uses humor when dealing with Miss Gulch at the farmhouse gate, one fellow writes: “She doesn’t find the humor amusing.  This is probably destructive, because the thrust of it is that she’s talking like a fool.”

The first question reads:  “Dorothy and her companions deal with considerable stress on their journey, yet manage to work in some coping humor along the way.  Name one scene where a character uses humor as a stress reliever.”  A student writes, “When it snows in the poppy field, the Lion awakens & says ‘Unusual weather we’re having.”  Another response: “When they meet the Lion and he’s bullying them, the Scarecrow cracks wise.”  Another:  “When the Lion has to lead the way into the Witch’s castle, he pretends to be all for it, but then asks the other two to ‘Talk me out of it!’  And then what I consider to be a strange response:  “The Wicked Witch of the West uses humor when she is stressed about the ruby slippers.  She laughs as she threatens Dorothy & her dog.”  WTF?   Another student responded, “When the Lion sings his song about his lack of courage, he calls himself ‘a sissy’ and ‘a mouse.’

About five minutes into the film, one prisoner in his 50s tells us: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen this.”  Incredulous, I ask, “How did you avoid it!”  He says, “I didn’t watch TV a lot!”  Tellingly, his was the loudest and most frequent laugh heard during the showing of the film.

The following day, my ILL clerk, who is a course participant, says: “Hey, I wanted to sincerely thank you for the film last night.  I haven’t seen that in ages.  It was good to see it again.  And I am impressed with Blu-Ray!  I have never seen such rich colors in a movie before!  That was somethin’ else!”

Praise, and for such a simple thing like showing a film, and introducing folks to new technology.  This job teaches me in many ways to never, never, ever take my freedom–and all concomitant blessings–for granted.

no place like it

“Hope eternal, in the strangest of places”

(In which we are reminded that, in the face of tragedy and disaster, attitude is everything….)

An inmate with throat cancer lives in the same block as one of my class assistants.

The other day, the assistant tells me: “We hide his speech pen all the time.  He larynges penknows to check with me first, because I’m the one who usually has it.”

When the clerk sees that I’m horrified at this, he laughs and explains: “He knows we mean no harm.  It’s the opposite.  We want him to feel normal.  We prank each other all the time.

We’re not gonna let something like cancer or any disease get in the way of life.  What good does it do to weep, or say ‘I’m sorry’?  So we tease.

bitch cancer

 

 

It’s our way of saying “It’s not so serious that we can’t be normal.  You’re gonna make it.”

 

 

Laughter Yoga in Prison

(IN WHICH we re-discover that starting a new physical activity in the middle of New England Summer is not the brightest of ideas, and have reinforced for Posterity the time-honored human truism that A Little Bribe Never Hurts….)

 

laughter yoga prison

We did our first laughter yoga session on Tuesday, July 21st.  With surprise and relief, I must admit that it went far better than I had anticipated.  Well, telling them ahead of time that we’d only be doing it for half the night and then they could go served to brighten their spirits.  It was kind of a bribe.  

 

Plus, it was oppressively hot and disconcertingly muggy.  hot hot hotThere’s no A/C in this library, only windows on the west side of the room (with no hope of a cross-breeze), and a wall-mounted fan that at present doesn’t work.  We brought out several table fans from the back office, but like that’s gonna help when you’re jumping around laughing and clapping and spinning and hopping in 90-degree heat & 100% humidity, with the sun streaming in aggressively through giant panes of glass at precisely that hour of the day? 

I am NOT whining; I am simply reporting.    

 

The laughter yoga leader training manual talks about certain personality types you’re apt to find in your session.  One of these is called the Laughter Blaster, the person with the loudest, golaughter blasterofiest, most contagious laugh. Well, we had one, a lifer who’s a huge fantasy buffoon.  He really must have needed to laugh.  I’ve attended laughter yoga sessions in public, and have never seen this kind of naked “let’s DO this!” enthusiasm for the concept.  He was champing at the bit (everyone thinks it’s ‘chomping,’ but everyone is wrong.  It’s ‘champing’) to perform the silliest exercises suggested in the manual.  And I am using the term ‘perform’ accurately. 

 

At one point I read to myself the title of one, the “Kangaroo Dance” and pants downsaid “We have no hope of doing that one.”  This guy says “What?” as if throwing down the gauntlet to the Cosmos.  So I read the exercise description to them.  And the guy starts hopping all over the room and laughing his fool head off.  He hopped so hard, his pants fell down.  I did not need to see that.  Everyone was laughing at his pants.

 

 

acting like an airplane

 

Before this hot, muggy night was through, we had hopped, shouted, giggled, clapped, stretched, laughed silently, and pretended we were airplanes buzzing around the room with our arms out & laughing at each other. We were exhausted. 

 

killjoys

 

Laughter is work.  The Puritans banned it on the Sabbath [citation needed].  And they knew a thing or two about stomping out the natural joy God wired us for, you betcha! [common knowledge]

 

 

 

Them andcalvin those Calvinists.  I think those Calvinists used to pillory people who were found smiling on the Sabbath.  John Calvin, a real barrel of laughs.  What got his knickers in a knot?  There’s someone who needed therapeutic laughter! 

 

I hope he’s in Purgatory now, being shown South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut on an eternal tape loop with his eyes pried open like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.

 

 

 

 

After the Money’s Gone

(In which we are reminded that All Things Must Pass which, strangely enough, even includes library grant money from the United States government….)

THIRTEEN DAYS AGO, or one day before the grant spending was officially history, I got the OK to spend the remainder of the grant money.  This money represented DVDs & Blu-Ray purchase requests that AEP couldn’t fill by the June 30th deadline.  Having said that: if you don’t currently deal with AEP, you must.  Phenomenal fill rate, people who specialize in government sales, and what they

THESE GUYS KNOW THEIR STUFF.

THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT INEPT.  THEY ARE OUTRAGEOUSLY EPT.

don’t have they drop ship.  Embarrassingly, until this grant experience I never knew what ‘drop ship’ meant.  Someone in our Fiscal office (who’s probably still laughing) schooled me, so now I’m in the know.

 

Advanced Educational Products – GSA

 

 

See this structure?  Isn’t it magnificent?  If only it was ours.  Our location is ugly.  But the people working at our ugly location are personable, competent book-people, and you can’t ask for anything more than that.  Wait–yes you CAN!  Earlier in the

year they also provided lunch on the house, as a thank-you for spending two thousand dollars.  Proving yet again that it’s what inside that counts.  This time, our paltry $281 netted us a paltry 19 titles.  Nineteen.  What is our world coming to?  You kids and your Nooks.

No books on humor-as-therapy were found this time, but among the titles purchased were (3) Bill Watterson Calvin & Hobbes remainders that are probably already delusionstolen as you read these words.  Cartoon collections are hard to keep.  I buy them anyway, in the psychotic belief that soon prison culture will undergo an inexplicable sea-change where inmates who normally steal this stuff begin to return them on or before the stamped due date.  We each of us have our self-delusions.

 

On Friday, we received the titles (all of them, it should be gratefully noted) from the Property Department.  The cataloger/classifier classified & cataloged them before he left at

 

DIGITAL LIBRARY MANAGEMENT, RETRO-STYLE!  HEY--FOR A NEW ENGLAND PRISON, THIS IS ACTUALLY HIP.

DLM, CIRCA 1999. WE’VE USED THIS FOR SO LONG,  IT’S RETRO.

3:30 to begin his weekend.  The circulation clerk created records for them in Circulation Plus.  The bookbinder covered hardcover dust jackets with Mylar.  Then the ILL clerk–who usually launches himself out of the building the moment “Movement!” is called but was still hanging around–took it upon himself to shelve them.

 

 

Easy-ComeEasy-Go

And so, the money’s gone.  This is what we have to show for it:

  • Some pedagogic technology
  • Humor-as-Therapy media to feed it
  • Two program texts (Healing Power of Humor by Allen Klein & HA! The Science of When We Laugh & Why by Scott Weems) @13 copies each
  • Laughter Yoga Leader training and certification
  • A 111-title comedian biography section
  • A 79-title humor-as-therapy section
  • 55 new books for the Humor section

 

And class content for a 12-week course on humorous techniques to apply when zHealing-Humoryou’re feeling stressed out and even when you’re feeling calm.  This Tuesday’s Week Seven topic is ‘Humor, Laughter, and Its Uses in the Correctional Environment.”

 

 

“Auntie Em! Auntie Em! It’s Twister™!”

“Sheep are very dim; once they get an idea in their heads, there’s no shiftin’ it.”   — Monty Python’s Flying Circus, “Flying Sheep” skit.

 

My poor interlibrary loan clerk.  This was the man who, one solar day before the humor-as-therapy program begins, comes to my office:

HE:   “Sign me up for that thing you’re doin.’  Whaddaya call it?  ‘Happy Time’?”

“‘Happy Time’?  It’s ‘Skill-Building Techniques for Stress Reduction.’  How’d you get ‘Happy Time’ out of that?”

“I couldn’t remember all that.  All I know is we’re supposed to laugh a lot.”

So I sign him up for ‘Happy Time,’ so he can laugh a lot.

A few weeks into our program, I ask this same ILL clerk if he’s completed his ‘Observing Your Personal Humor Style’ assignment for the week.  This assignment asks inmates to be aware of countervailing humor types (constructive & destructive) while watching TV, listening to the radio, hearing funny comments or observing practical jokes in the Unit or the Yard, as well as funny things they say, do, or think.  They are to keep a tally of each time they witness or participate in either constructive or destructive humor.

“I’m still doing it.  I hear a lot of negative humor all around me is what I’m learning.  There’s so much, I’ll have to use another page!”

“Just write in the space, ‘Too many to list.'”

“Oh!  We can do that?”

“That’s what I’M doing.  Especially with my thought life.  Lots of destructive humor swirling around in there.”

“OK, good, thank you.  That makes it a lot easier.”

“So, how’re you enjoying the course so far?”

“I like it!  I like when you showed the cartoons.  I laughed at almost every one of those.”

“Happy Time.”

“You’re not gonna let me forget that, thanks!  I like that you can laugh and learn new stuff at the same time.  Just don’t expect me to do Twister™.  I was talkin’ with some of the guys.  They’re gonna push back on that one.”

It is here that we must pause our narrative, and interject some much-needed-or-the-rest-of-this-won’t-stand-a-chance-of-making-the-slightest-bit-of-sense back story. 

In the previous class I mention that, when we finally do a Laughter Yoga session, we’ll need to remove the tables & chairs to make space for laughter exercises.  I also mention that, when I participated in a laughter yoga session at Walpole Pubic Library, at the end of it all we lay on mats and practice deep, relaxing breaths as a cool-down from all the belly laughter.  But In this man’s twisted mind, upon hearing the word mats and then the word exercises his thoughts twist to Twister™.

1966 Twister GameME:   “Twister™?  What the hell are you talking about?”

HE:   “You said we had to play Twister™.”

“Never.  Mother of God!”

“You told us last class.”

“Look, I created this program.  Like I’m gonna have adult male prisoners playing Twister™ with each other.”

“Everyone else think so, too.  They think you’re gonna make us play Twister™.”

“If they think that, it’s because of you!”

This past Friday, I mention to my course assistant that the ILL clerk refuses to understand that I never referred to, joked about, or even thought of Twister,™ “The Game That Ties You Up In Knots,” by Milton Bradley.

ME:   “He’ll go to his grave believing that!”

ASSISTANT:   “He’s a bug.”  (Usage note:  In New England, “He’s a bug” means “He is certifiably and dangerously insane”).

“He’s also the one who keeps advocating for us to screen The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Hey, at least that has a twister in it.”oz twister<laughs>  “THAT’S what he’s up to!  He’s talking about twisters to make you show the film!  Whadda they call that?  Subliminal! He’s manipulating you!”

 

Nah.  He’s just a bug. 

BTW — Here in New England, they call it ‘Twist-ah.’  Of course they do. 

They also raise children, some of whom end up in jail believing that their rnG3Y6Librarian could even conceive of seeking written approval to supervise games of Twist-ah™ in an adult-male prison.

Humor-as-Therapy, indeed.