Free A Bad Idea I'm About to Do by Chris Gethard Page A

crammed against each other in one corner as the man laughed and stared us down.
    â€œAnybody want to try any fucking funny shit?” he asked. No one budged. “Didn’t think so,” he grinned.
    We were shuffled into a dark auditorium and told to sit on our knees with our hands under our butts. The cavernous room was black save for the light on the stage.
    â€œStay right where you are, and don’t put your hands anywhere but under your assholes,” the guards said. “We’re leaving. But don’t worry—the lifers are on their way.”
    The lifers were the group of murderers at the heart of Scared Straight. Before we’d left on this trip, Knutsen had made it very clear that these were very dangerous men.
    â€œKeep in mind the lifers will yell at you,” he’d said on the bus, “but they can’t touch you. If they do, the guards will take them out. Hard. Because it will be bad.”
    My mouth went dry.
    â€œThe reason they can’t touch you is because they once put a kid in the hospital,” he continued. “Not someone from our school. Thank God. It sounds like the sort of thing you wouldn’t want to see with your own eyes.”
    There wasn’t a single faker amongst the lifers; these were authentic killers—murderers who had killed and gone to prison, and who would one day die in prison.
    The door burst open. A dozen of the hardest-looking men I’ve ever seen walked in and glared at us. They made eye contact, intimidating us even before speaking.
    I glanced out of the corner of my eye at my classmates. Looking down the line, I saw bully after bully, each more formidable than the last. At the end of the line was Kenward. I’d never seen him look anything but aggressive. He was as scared as I was.

    Finally, one of the inmates stepped forward and talked.
    He seemed reasonable enough. I mean, he was still scary as shit, but within the bounds of reason. “You kids think you’re bad, I guess,” he began. “Well, let me tell you something. Crime is a road I’ve walked down. And it’s a dark road.”
    With no provocation he turned into a cross between the Incredible Hulk and the Ultimate Warrior. “AND YOU DON’T WANT TO WALK DOWN THAT ROAD !” He shouted in a low guttural roar. His eyes bulged out of his head like Beetlejuice, and when he reared back and flexed his muscles, veins popped out of his arms and neck. He was easily the scariest person I’d ever seen. If it wasn’t so clearly legit, his scariness would have been cartoonish. I was tempted to laugh, but was smart enough not to tempt this man’s ire.
    Frank the loudmouthed jock didn’t demonstrate the same restraint. He smirked. After all the day’s events, I didn’t know why he thought this was a good idea. Frank wasn’t the worst guy, just kind of a punk. He was a good-looking mixed-race athlete who saw himself as the shit and got in trouble trying to prove it. As soon as he smirked, the inmate was in his face. “Why you laughing, motherfucker? You think we boys?” he asked. “Why, ’cause you black? You ain’t black, you half a nigga!”
    Frank burst into tears. Seeing this football player break down so easily—a guy who could probably bench-press me—made a lightbulb go off in my brain: toughness is a defense mechanism, and all of us are just trying to make it through the day. It was the first time I’d ever felt a bond with Frank: we both had the ability to cry like little bitches.
    A kid none of us recognized was led in to join us halfway through the endless parade of screaming murderers. His parents had brought him. He didn’t go to our school and was four or five years younger than us. He had a bad look about him.

    Apparently the prisoners had been told to go hard on this kid. They got in his face, threatened him physically, and actually pushed him around. As he sobbed, a few