Entertaining the Gendarmes

What an unsettling feeling it was to have two Idaho Department of Correction officers tromping through my house this afternoon, their gold badges flashing (batches? we don' need no steenking batches!) and jackboots leaving smears of mud, an all too vivid reminder of my sullied past. Although I knew this home visit was mandatory, part of my necessary contact with them, and although I had nothing to illegal to hide, it still quickened my pulse and caused my thoughts to race. I caught myself holding my infant son unnecessarily tight as I surreptitiously tried to decipher everything they did and said during the short stay. They were here perhaps three or four minutes, yet it felt like eternity.
Freedom. Such a precious thing, yet so intangible, ethereal really. How does one even describe the lack of freedom to someone who'd always had it? I won't try, not in these pages anyhow. What I can say is that no cost is too great for me to pay to maintain it. This includes suffering the indignity of Big Brother (or Sister, in my case) infringing upon what little privacy I have in my modest home ("Well-kept. Even... homey", my probation officer said, with a faintly surprised tone.) I have no problem jumping through the numerous hoops and paying the neverending costs: of supervision, of urinalysis, of court fines, fees and restitution. Again. Just please don't ever send me back to jail.
All of this is worth it, if I am afforded the privelege of remaining in this society, among the company of my loved ones. Freedom, sweet freedom. For it is what keeps me sane, and has helped keep me sober for these last few years as well. The two do go hand in hand, after all; and they, in return, are directly proportionate to my quality of life continuing to rise, and rise some more. The longer I'm out (and clean), the better life gets; the better life gets, the easier it is to STAY on the straight and narrow...
But I can say none of this to the gendarmes. They are not counselors, concerned with my well-being or what makes me tick; no, all they are really are glorified babysitters. They view us all with thinly veiled suspicion, looking for the lie in every statement- and who can really blame them? Ninety percent of the time, the convict does lie, and will reoffend. Well, maybe only seventy percent, I don't know. Still, the majority, that's for sure.
All I know is I'm in the minority- one of the few who've indisputably changed their lives for the better, never to darken the inside of a cell again. Not from my own doing, anyhow. So now all I have to do is convince this new P. O. of mine of that fact, and I should be discharged from all this nonsense once again within a year.