First, let me say hello, and I’d really appreciate it if you would say hello back. Simply put, for the first two years of my prison ordeal I couldn’t say hello to anyone without a prison officer giving me a whack across the face for doing this otherwise simple act. An act which violated the ‘silence rule’ I was made to live under on Death Row.
Because I was made to endure such a humiliation, I ask every audience that I now speak before to simply say hello back to me as I feel I have paid so dearly to earn that from them. For me it’s my way to hold my head up in the face of being so cowed in life. I hope that by the time you finish this book, you will offer me as much in respect for what it took for me to come back from such a hell to say this same thing to you here in these pages . . .