One of the greatest television programs of all time was Homicide:Life On The Streets. It was perfectly written and acted with scenes and characters that will stick with you years later. Not too many other shows can make that claim.
One such scene was between Frank Pembleton (played by the great Andre Braugher) and a teenager killer, who thought that he should be set free because he didn’t mean to kill his victim; he meant to kill somebody else. As the clueless kid was being taken off to real prison, Pembleton pulled him aside and gave him this advice: “Keep your ass to the wall and don’t trust anybody, don’t help anybody, don’t ask anybody for anything.”
The reason I thought of it is because of Scalped by Jason Aaron. I am reading the second volume and there is a part where some gives advice to another man who is going to Death Row: “Keep your ass to the wall, kid. Don’t drop your guard, and never trust anybody.”
I’m pretty sure that there is no plagarism going on because I have heard different variations on that saying before, but it really got me thinking about what advice I would give some of the young people in my life if they were headed off to jail.
After a lot of thinking I would probably tell them: keep your ass to the wall, trust no one and don’t owe anybody anything.