In my first months as a volunteer, a meeting of the council of the Native American Council of Tribes (NACT) was called because the Native inmates were very upset.  I don’t remember anymore what the problem was.  My supervisor said she was going to sit by the door of the meeting room with her radio in hand so she could call for officers if things became too heated.  I sat across the room below a window with a table behind me.  As the men came, they brought their passes to me and I checked off the attendance record before they sat down and put the passes behind me on the table so they could be signed at the end of the meeting.  The discussion became very heated.  As I listened, a breeze came through the window blowing all the passes on the floor.  When I leaned forward in my chair to pick them up, I lost my balance and fell on the floor.  There was total silence for a second.  The inmates sitting on either side of me reached to pick me up and put me back in my chair.  Then the laughter began.  It became even louder, when one man across the room yelled out, “We want a sober volunteer.”  All the bad feelings in the room evaporated as my face turned red.  The meeting ended in laughter.

The next time I was in a meeting with the group, I tied a plastic bag around myself and my chair so I wouldn’t fall out again.

Three years later I met a new inmate.  He looked at me and said I must be the volunteer who fell out of my chair onto the floor.  I asked him how he knew since he wasn’t even in prison then.  He told me the incident had become part of prison lore. 

Mary Montoya