REMIX THE PLAN, RETURN TO THE PURPOSE (The Sentences That Create Us | Haymarket)
The waiting room was cramped. Self-care bulletins, hotline advertisements and glossy Department of Probation postings were taped on its green walls. In slanted cursive, a child-size Post It cautioned, “Please note, NYC Dept of Probation POs work 7 days per week. Any Departmental representative may/can visit your home, employment, program, school, or family members home. Thanks.”
Wide-legged and cross-armed, a young man slumped into a seat beneath the warning. Across the room, under a baseball cap’s brim, another’s eyes were closed, his head hung low as he napped. Next to him, a woman no older than twenty-five cupped her cheek with a palm, sculpted nails pressing into hair slicked into a high bun. Well past her fifties, a grey-headed woman sat behind a personal shopping cart filled with plastic bags of all colors and sizes. Just under a dozen storytellers sat in the waiting room of the New York City Department of Probation’s Bed Stuy office. Instead of meeting with their POs, they were there to participate in the first session of a ten-week writing program Probation hired me to facilitate. By the looks of it, but for the woman with the cart, no one gave a shit about who I was or what I had to say. The Department of Probation’s incentive worked. The storytellers were there because attending the class absolved them from reporting to their respective POs each week.
