Describe a typical prison visit?

The minute I walk in the door I have to go up and fill out a card. They don’t even tell you what to do so you have to really know what you’re doing. There’s a card you got to grab you got to write out your name, social security number birth date - all your vital information and who you’re visiting.

The kid’s names go on the back, along with their social security numbers. You have your non-driver issued ID or a driver’s licenses and you drop all this into a little tray that they leave for you. Then grab a key and hit the bathroom because it’s a pain in the rear end to come back out and use the bathroom. They don’t like you to do that.

Try to bring five dollars in because vending machines are very expensive - so I make some change. So you just sit and wait. Because I’m out-of-state I get processed usually last. So I just chill out and give the kids the rules. You behave; you keep an eye on the camera. You keep your hands on the table; you don’t play with your hair. You don’t do any of these things. Let them know the rules. Let them know to keep their southern manners. Yes sir yes ma’am.

Then they call me through. I got to let all the kids go through first because I got the leg brace. They go through the beep detector. It scared them the first time. They’re cool with it now since they know what it is. They go through it and I beep going through so I have to just show them that I got a leg brace.

You get your hand stamped with some florescent thing and you got to go and hit door right when they unlock it. And then you’ve got to make sure the door shuts behind you before the next window. At the next window they check your stamp.

There’s a really cool guard in there that makes the kids laugh when he checks the hand stamps. Then we go to our assigned table. You get your table and with any kind of luck Alan might be there. Most of the time he’s not. I just sit at my table and I watch the window where they bring the inmates in. I have to watch for him and I have to wait till he crosses the red line perimeter that goes all the way around the inside of the visiting room. When he crosses the line the kids can go up to him and give him a hug and then you sit down. I go up and get him a coffee because he doesn’t get coffee. They don’t have real sugar in there so he doesn’t get coffee and if he does get it he said you basically gotta plug your nose and chug it down. He’s all excited with that because that’s all he gets for a year.

Once you sit you’ve got to find a camera and the correctional officer will let you know which one is yours because it’s got a red dot that hits on you. You look for your camera and that’s the camera you’ve got to keep eye contact with. I got one camera that I watch. The kids have to watch the camera that’s behind me. I show them where the red dot is and that’s the camera you have to keep contact with. So they’re getting pretty good at keeping eye contact with the guards and the camera.

I’ve got to make sure the change is on my side of the table. Alan can’t touch the change. Josh made the mistake and tried to give him some quarters and he touched the quarter to look at it. You’re not supposed to do that, so when the guard came by he handed it back and he let the guard know that his son was trying to show him the quarter and he watched him hand it back.

You can’t hand him anything. If you are caught handing him anything from your pockets he’s automatically written up and you’re banished from the visiting room. Normally you’re banished for your first offense for ninety days - which would blow my visit. So we’re very careful about that. I can hand him a cup of coffee out of the vending machine and that’s it.

What is the kissing policy at the prison visiting room?

You can give a kiss at the beginning of the visit. It felt pretty good this year but usually the guards are right there watching. You’re not supposed to French kiss, but everyone sneaks them in anyway. There is a time limit but they’re not too heavy on it. They watch you.

You park your butt and you can’t kiss again until the end of the visit. At the end of the visit you can have another kiss goodbye. The first year I was warned that there was a limit on the kisses. You can hold hands. You can’t have your hands intertwined but you can hold hands. They do not like you to hold hands with your kids - they try to shy away from that. You can’t have your kids sit on your lap or between your legs or anything like that. The kids should be sitting in front of you. A whole lot of rules.

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