Remember that movie where the inmates played the prison guards?

I am shooting baskets out next to the guest house where I'm staying here at the prison. From where I stand I can see all the various buildings that house the inmates. Each one is for a different kind of prisoner, based on behavior and risk of escape. To my immediate left is "Camp Cupcake" where the minimum security prisoners are--and minimum means no fences, no locked doors. When I walk to and from the clinic in the morning and the afternoon I walk right by these guys. Every facility, even the more secure ones, are filled with exercising inmates. At Camp Cupcake it's mostly joggers and walkers in the morning. Then handball, racquetball, more jogging, basketball, baseball, and weight-lifting in the afternoons. One guy throws a huge, heavy medicine ball as far as he can, sprints to it, does ten push ups, and then throws it again with the opposite arm and sprints to it, repeating the routine over a hundred-yard stretch of open field. Some of these guys are big, strong, and in excellent shape. One of my patients is a former MMA fighter who works out 5 hours a day.

This brings me to the guards--sorry, "Correction Officers." They see these ultimate workout routines and they take notice. The prison staff actually have a state-of-the-art workout facility that gets used a lot. This isn't the buy-a-gym-membership-for-the-New-Year-and-then-never-go crowd. One guard, I mean officer, says they have to stay strong to fight the prisoners if needed. Me, I couldn't work out enough in a million years to fight MMA guy. But I don't have to. I'm Androcles, who pulls the thorn out of the lion's paw, so I'm safe. I think.

So I'm shooting baskets, and starting to get used to the glint of the sun off the razor wire, and a big, hulking guy walks up and says hi. He's wearing a plastic garbage bag-shirt under his tank top to make him sweat more. Okay, whatever.

I figure out pretty quickly that he's a C.O. (correction officer, not a guard, remember). He wants to play some ball: Make 'em, take 'em, to 7 points, gotta win by two. Regular baskets count one point. Three-pointers count as two. He isn't tall, but he has arms way bigger than mine. Waaaaay bigger. And he has a chest like a horse. He's from the Midwest, and like many a farm boy he can shoot the three. I find that out on the first possession. Then I overcompensate and guard him close and he goes right by me. It's 3-0 and I feel lame. I finally get the ball on a missed shot and I actually begin to contemplate a strategy of making him run around and sweat excessively under that garbage bag to make him tire out. But then I think how tired that would make me, and I just take a shot. It goes in and so does my next; a turn-around jump hook off the glass. 3-2 and I start to think I can take this dude. Then I dribble the ball off my leg, and curse under my breath. He's super nice and never makes me feel bad, even as I continue to make blunder after blunder. But he cools off from outside and I make a few shots to keep it close. Eventually he takes the game 7-5, and we shake hands and re-introduce ourselves so that we can remember each other's names.

Current Record: 0 wins, 1 loss.

But it's a long season, and I am blessed with dumb optimism and high hopes.