Calling All Chain Ganglies

Dear Friends,

Great news, adolescent yardbirds! "Busting Out of Juvie," the joyful new song from your friends at Hard Taco, will walk you through the procedures for unincarcerating yourself. 

Be assured that my pedigree as an escapology coach is excellent. In the slammer they referred to me as Professor Slippery because no cell could hold me. (Before that, I was known as Adjunct Professor Slippery because I hadn't yet published enough to make tenure.) I earned those monikers by escaping from handcuffs, straightjackets, hermetically sealed coffins, barrels, a uterus, and fish-tanks. When it comes to prison breaks, I guess you could say I'm an expert.

As point of fact, I am an expert... the only reason I'm guessing you could say it is that you may have recently injured your larynx. (Perhaps in a botched prison break?) 

You Can't Practice Escapology without Apology

You all used to laugh at me when I stayed after school to untie all the knots in the soccer nets while holding my breath. Now I'm on the outside, and you're in the can. Who's laughing now? Certainly not you with your ruptured larynx. But that's all water under the bridge. You need to bust out of lockdown, and Emeritus Professor Slippery is here to help.

The most common mistake that prospective escapees make is waiting until the time is right. If you have that mindset, you'll never get out of prison. Something will always come up! First, you'll tell yourself, "I'll just wait until the trigger-happy tower guard is on vacation." When he is, you'll say, "I should probably stay until I finish a few more license plates, just to complete the series."  Next thing you know, you've served out your entire sentence, and you never even burrowed into a single sewer pipe. 

No, if you're going to take a powder, you should do it this very instant. Print out the rest of this document and take it with you, following these instructions in real time.

1. Roll up your dirty uniforms and stuff them under your sheets so it looks like there is a sleeping body in your bed.  Fill socks with cigarette butts and candy bar wrappers and lay those along side the wadded up uniforms so it looks like arms. Once the body looks believable, put a lifelike silicone replica of your head on the pillow.

2. Bribe the trigger-happy tower guard to hand deliver a sealed envelope to the warden. Surprise! The letter within the envelope orders the warden to kill the person who bore the message. This works especially well when the guard is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but it will ultimately backfire if he is a handsome peasant who wants to marry your daughter. 

3. Swipe a butter knife from the cafeteria and swallow it. Fake a seizure (or have a real one if you are able.) They will rush you to the infirmary. As they charge up the defibrillator paddles, cough up the butter knife and hold the medical assistant hostage until he gives you an alcohol wipe, a centrifuge, a latex glove, and a bag of normal saline. Swallow them.

3a. Fake another seizure, and then run like mad into the yard. With any luck, the trigger-happy tower guard will be dead by the warden's hand, or at least on vacation today. 

4. Cough up the centrifuge and use it to climb the inner wall. It's difficult to explain this procedure in writing, but here's an drawing of how it works.

\ /

| |

| |c \\o..

| |    / \

| |          '

| |

Legend:
c = centrifuge

Hopefully, you don't accidentally drop the butter knife when you're half way up like you do in my drawing, but if you do, DO NOT GO BACK FOR IT unless there's time.

5. Cough up the latex glove and use it to climb over the barbed wire without getting electrocuted or punctured. 

6. The last hurdle is the outer fence. By now, the alcohol wipe and bag of normal saline in your stomach have suppressed your appetite so that you have lost enough weight to slip through the bars easily.

7. You're free! Before they catch you again, enjoy the things that free people do, like going to the Farmer's Market or burrowing into a sewer pipe.

With warmest regards,
Zach