The sad tale of Not Quite Bright

IntimidatingShrink has been a forensic psychologist for a long time. In addition to doing standard mental health assessments on inmates, he also gets to do competency and "how likely are you to re-offend" exams. He keeps us posted whenever "our people" wind up in the criminal justice system.

I got a call from him the other day.
"You have a Not Quite Bright on your caseload, right?"
"Yeah..." I've got about ninety people on my caseload. It takes a minute to remember who's who without accessing our computer records.
"You may want to put his case on hold for a few months. He's back in jail in meth possession charges."
This surprised me. "He just was in last month on meth charges. Did he jump bail?"
"Mr. Bright got arrested yesterday when he went to his court date for last month's meth charges. He actually had more meth in his pockets that he brought to court!"

A matter of perspective

I called the jail yesterday to follow up on a client who was about to be released. The phone was answered by the perkiest male voice I've ever heard.

"Hi, this is Officer Perky! It's a great day here at Random County Correctional Center!"

"This is HelloNurse calling from County Mental Health about Bonnie Parker's scheduled release tomorrow... What do they put in the coffee over there at the jail? It sounds like you're having way more fun with your job than I am with mine today."

Pause. It lasted so long I almost thought we'd been disconnected until Officer Perky spoke again. "Actually the coffee here is pretty terrible. It's so bad that everything else is wonderful in comparison!"