Fish (1-60)

Summary

           In the memoir Fish, 1-5-3-0-5-2, better known as Timmy Parsell, describes his day-in-the-life of a prisoner in Michigan Reformatory. He was seventeen years old when he was enrolled into the government facility. He was sentenced four  to twenty-one years for holding up a photo mat. The irony is that he was able to hold it up with a toy gun. Yet, still he was convicted as dangerous, and did he get his comeuppance. He was sentenced to a medium security prison, which was recorded as one of the worst. The day his ordered psychologist had assigned him, he had made blatant remarks about him having to get a man in jail because he was too pretty to be alone or else he would be fresh meat. Along side his experiences with prison he reminisces about his childhood experiences. He recalls his fighting mother and father, his sister Connie, and his beloved older brother Ricky. Ricky was five years older and Timmy would always follow Ricky around even if he was tortured fore it. He came from a poor white family in Dearborn, an all white community. They did not allow black others from Detroit because they wanted to keep their neighborhood free from the Race Riots in the late 1970's. 

             

Quote

          "I was toot ashamed to admit it at the time, but the fact that she was a black women, or that she had on way too much make-up, had nothing to do with it. It was because she was a women" (Parsell 39). 

Reaction

          This showed me a lot about the author and what lies ahead in the story. I can not image a seventeen ear old gay boy entering a prison full of sexually stressed men. He says that he had to fail gym in middle school because he could not take a shower in the locker room without having a Bonner. Timmy could not even tell anyone he was gay because not only did he not want to believe it, but he would be shunned from his community because there definition of queer was a sissy, or a friend that your mad at. I can actually relate that to my life because teenagers these days, or any day, are absent minded when it comes to sensitivity. What one kid does the other does the same. All day what you hear is "thats so gay", when what they mean is that is so stupid or dumb. They do not to it because they do not know what it means but because they want to do what the other kids are doing. Like I said monkey say monkey do. I think that is going to soon tie in with the story because to survive in prison he is going to do what his other inmates are doing and not stand out.