It’s traumatic enough to find the cost of your fave goodies jacked up every time you rock up to the shops (RIP, 20c lolly bags), but imagine missing four decades straight of supermarket price hikes.
Imagine missing the boat on those ~ crazy ~ mobile phones, too. Actually, just imagine being stuck stuck in prison in the 60s and spat out, in Times Square, in 2015.
Alternatively, you could get around Otis Johnson’s hectic culture shock. The dude was recently released from prison after serving a 44-year sentence for attempted murder, and spoke to Al Jazeera ’bout readjusting to life outside.
First on the list of “what-the-everloving-fuck-is-going-on”? Earphones. Natch.
“I don’t know with those things, with the phone things? iPhones, they call them, or something like that? And I thought in my mind, what, has everyone become CIA or agents and stuff like that?”
Visiting the deli after a four-decade absence is mental too, apparently. “That ‘gator’ stuff? Pink. Blue. I started drinking that once in a while, just because it looks funny,” Johnson says, before having his mind blown by peanut butter and jam put together in the same jar. TBH, mate, that is pretty wild, even in 2015.
By all means, this doesn’t look like a Brooks from Shawshank deal. Johnson said “I don’t feel like society owes me anything. Everything happens for a reason, I believe. So I let that go, and deal with the future instead of dealing with the past.”
It’s a peaceful mindset for a dude who’s essentially been shot half a century into the future. Get your eyes on it below:
