"Mac"

The shower stalls in the Yavapai County Jail are down right vicious! They don’t look exceptionally dangerous, they are your basic stainless steel boxes with three sides and a canvas shower curtain on the open, fourth side. They have a shower head which sprays lukewarm water when it’s not clogged up or dented, and a drain in the bottom, which works about 75 percent of the time. I have never noticed any shark-like teeth or raptors claws protruding from any of the corners or orifices and it is not likely the showers can sprout appendages with which to trip an inmate who is stepping in or out. So, this being the case, why is it that so many of our unwary inmates end up falling and getting hurt in those darned showers?

Must be the soap. It’s standard, jail-issue stuff that comes in small bars, similar to the soap you get at a Motel-6. There must be some property in those little bars of soap that spread evil and danger when taken into the shower stalls. I have no better explanation for all the numerous black eyes and split lips that emerge from those nemesis showers.

Maybe it’s not really the showers at all. Maybe something else is causing the injuries, such as fistfights, but that would mean the inmates are telling fibs and that is just so hard to believe. An inmate tell a lie? Nonsense! Whenever one of them appeared at roll call or meal count and was sporting a shiny new black eye or bloodied lip, I always asked them what on earth happened and it was always the same answer, “I fell in the shower.” Why would they lie about that? Why would they try to cover up something as basic and manly as a fight with some sorry excuse about falling in the shower?

After hearing this over and over for all those years I began to realize there must be something terribly wrong with the showers! I brought this up with my Sergeant and he agreed. We then compared notes with the officers on other shifts and they conferred: Inmates are being attacked on a daily basis by the showers.

So now that we had a pattern and a suspect in the injuries, it became necessary to find the third aspect: Motive. Why would a stainless steel shower stall want to render injury to the inmates who used it? Going back to the beginning of this epic, one might recall the comments made about the jail aromas. They can be fierce. Is it possible the showers are so repulsed by the smells they have to put up with each and every day that they revolt and lash out in disgust at what washes down their drains?

Makes sense, I suppose, except that those ripe aromas are rather collective and do not emanate from any one particular individual. On occasion there are inmates who do practice some form of hygiene and do not smell like moldy teeth and unwashed underwear. So then, why is it that even some of these relatively clean and sanitary men end up with black eyes and bruises from attacks by the showers?

Well, one can only assume the whole thing is a farce. These battered inmates are not falling or otherwise catapulting around in the showers at all! The showers are innocent! They have nothing to do with the injuries and are simply patsies for some other evil force of nature. My conclusion is that the other inmates are responsible. There are fistfights going on, or attacks of one kind or another, and the showers are being blamed to keep it all as secretive as possible. And did it really take me weeks or months of pondering to come to that conclusion? No, of course not, but proving otherwise was nearly impossible...