Issue 3, September 2007

One could surmise that the definition of a criminal is a hustler. Yet “go-getter” hoodlums come to prison just to do the Penguin Waddle, Wedgie Walk, and the Senior Shuffle! What none realizes is that, once caught, the hustling days (the need for speed) are over! When one arrives in prison the best advice given by the old heads for decades has been to “drink plenty of water, and walk slow.” We just never knew how slow we’d walk!

Going to the Yard? Consider the Penguin Waddle, as it’s funny to watch! Everything in prison is heavily monitored, no matter what public perceptions exist to the contrary. There is a public address system, and we constantly hear disembodied voices cautioning us to “Walk, no running”. The Yard has limited space and limited athletic equipment. It’s always on a first-come, first-served basis, and so we seek to be first. So we are straining mightily to walk by the fastest means possible. And the first batch of brothers is out the door running (rather, walking), but we are bent forward, hands and feet splayed wide apart in our haste, and legs pumping. We flap our arms, forearms bent at the elbows to touch our biceps so they look like little wings, as if wishing we could fly, trusting the hummingbird motion of our arms will speed us along the way just that incremental difference to move up a spot in the waiting line. To watch what we do is to laugh, as we resemble nothing so much as a spectacle we have all seen on PBS Nature shows or in the March of the Penguins documentary; the bucket of sardines the penguins just spotted thrown to them in the zoo, or a rookery of penguins all simultaneously heading for the water!

And that’s what the street hustlers should keep in mind—that there are unfamiliar moves which they’ll have to learn once sentenced to prison—a whole new hustle; the infamous Penguin Waddle, Wedgie Walk, and Senior Shuffle!