Where I went to high school they would bring in real prisoners still serving time to come to the schools and talk to students about the dangers of doing crime .

Every year I was in high school the same prisoner came back to my high school to speak. Big Ed. He was in prison for drugs and attempted murder. When I first met him he had only a few years left.

When I was a senior he wrote this play that our school and the prison approved for him to direct. We practiced 2 nights a week for about a month. Big Ed would be supervised by 2 guards from the prison and this older female cop that only did media stuff and fundraisers. I don't know if she even had a weapon.

Big Ed had severed 20 something years. He wrote the play over that period of time, so the words in the play were 30 year old slang words from his childhood. He had us calling people "Jive turkeys" and calling "females foxy mommas " . It was a poorly written play with a great message about staying off drugs and out of prison .I had the lead role, because I was the last surviving senior student in the play, the rest dropped out of the play because it was so poorly written. In the end it was me and a bunch of freshmen from a high school that was 1 hour from the city.

We only performed the play one time in front of an audience. It wasn't a complete disaster but it was not good at all. The kids kept freezing up and forgetting their lines. They were mumbling their words. In a scene that I was supposed to be yelling and angry the guy I was on stage with completely forgets his lines. I said " Do you understand what I went through!!!!" " Do you understand what I went through?!!". His response was supposed to be the last line then I storm off, and they close the curtain. They kept waiting for him to respond but he never did. Finally they just closed the curtain. Big Ed the director had the nerve to yell and scream at us for not what he kept saying " bringing it".

After my last scene I went outside because I didn't like the way Big Ed was talking to us. I was told that after the play was over Big Ed got on stage and told the audience that we would be going out performing the play all over the state. Yeah right, I didn't see Big Ed again for about 5 years and that was just walking by in the Mall, he had gotten out of prison a year after the play.

Being in that play was an experience I'll never forget. I met people in that play that I'm attached to forever.

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