Day Two was way less funny than Day One, though I did find out that I totally got the highest score on the pre-test – I rocked the house with a 97/100. I am sooo gonna be the best sex offender ever (note: this is a joke.) No, today, we discussed change and the 8 major thinking errors, which is actually good stuff to cover here, and were it not for the fact that the classes are time-limited, would do a ton of good for a lot of these guys.
Honestly, I could run this down and be dismissive about the classes because *I* don’t need them, but a lot of these guys do. One of the exercises today was to answer the question “If you died today, what would people say about you?” Some of the answers depressed the hell out of me, like one guy said, “No one ever had anything good to say about me and I’d just like to pass,” and the raw pain in his voice almost destroyed me.
The worst thing about this place and these classes specifically is that it is causing me to see the human face and feelings behind the sex offender, and that pisses me right the hell off. I damn well enjoyed the easy superiority that I and society in general had going on when dealing with or considering sex offenders. That flat-out gut instinct that all people stuffed in the “registered sex offender” box are child-raping scum deserving of cruel and unusual punishments, stripped of rights and imprisoned forever. That instinct/knowledge has been tempered by my days living among the lepers, and I’m kinda pissed about that.