Free Kindness for Weakness by Shawn Goodman Page B

argument I try to make in the essay.
    At shift change (three o’clock), Mr. Eboue and another guard I’ve never seen before come in and get us ready for group. The other guard’s name is Mr. Samson, and he’s an absolute giant of a man. His shoulders are so broad and thickly muscled that he looks like he could be in the WWF. He’s so big that he dwarfs Horvath and my brother. The boys of Bravo Unit, seated in a crooked row of plastic chairs, grin and put out their palms for Mr. Samson to slap.
    He walks down the line giving us high fives and bumps, saying, “Hey,” and “How’s it going, my man?”
    Bobby the Weasel shouts, “Do the thing!” as he bounces up and down in his chair again like he’s on springs. “Come on, just once!”
    Mr. Samson looks at Mr. E, who shrugs. The rest of the boys join in, “Yeah, Samson. Come on!”
    He drops his hands by his belt so that one is gripping the other. He flexes his pec muscles, making them jump up and down. It’s funny to watch, like his stretched-tight shirt is dancing; we all laugh and cheer. Then he takes a step toward me.
    “I haven’t met you yet,” he says, sticking out his hand.
    I brace myself for a bone-crushing shake, like Louis’s, but his grip is light, almost gentle.
    “I work three to eleven with my friend Mr. E,” he says. “We do group every day at three with Bravo. Anger Replacement,Beat the Streets, and others. You should participate in every group, but today you can just listen. Okay?”
    “Okay,” I say.
    “We’re still working on being able to tolerate things that are unfair. Who wants to start us off?” he says, standing in front of us.
    Everybody looks at their feet.
    “Come on, now. Who used their skills this past week? Who had to deal with something that wasn’t fair?”
    Tony raises his hand and says, “I got pissed off in class and didn’t do nothing about it, even though I really wanted to.”
    “Good, Tony. What was the situation?”
    “Mr. Goldschmidt told me to do, like, a hundred math problems, and I told him I shouldn’t have to because I already passed the GED and I’m leaving soon anyway. But he said it don’t matter, that a GED’s no accomplishment. It just means I don’t have the discipline to get a real diploma.”
    Samson sighs as he considers this, his massive shoulders rising and falling with the gesture of disappointment. He doesn’t say anything bad about Mr. Goldschmidt, but it’s clear he doesn’t agree.
    “What did it feel like when he told you that?” he says.
    “Man, to be honest, it felt like I wanted to get violent, you know what I mean? Like I wanted to …”
    Samson cuts him off with a raised hand, but not before several others put in their two cents. Antwon, a lanky kid with heavy-lidded eyes, sucks his teeth and says he hates Mr. Goldschmidt. Double X, whose real name is XavierXavier, says he hates all the teachers except Ms. Bonetta, who he says is fine. There are even louder murmurs of agreement.
    “And what did you do about it, Tony?” Samson says.
    “Nothin’. I mean, I argued a little bit to let him know it was stupid. But I did the math problems. They was easy anyway.”
    “And what happened?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “When you didn’t react, when you let it go. Did anything bad happen?”
    “No.”
    “Did you feel like less of a man?”
    “No way.”
    “That shows you’re ready to go home, Tony. Nice job.”
    He grins, laughing it off when the other kids call him a brownnoser.
    Mr. E cuts in and says, “If you guys don’t learn to deal with unfairness, your anger will short-circuit your brain and you’ll get arrested, beat up, or shot. Those are the only choices.”
    Coty, a country kid who draws pictures of four-wheelers and NASCAR racing scenes, raises his hand. “Is that why I black out when I fight, because my brain short-circuits?”
    “Could be.”
    Other boys say that they black out, too. Double X says he once had an argument with a friend, and then