I woke up dizzy. I strained to look around. This space was the size of a breadbox. My head ached. There was dried blood on my left hand. I lifted my blood stained hand to my right eye. "Ouch!" It was nearly swollen shut. I braced myself and sat up on the edge of the cot that I was occupying. My bones cracked. It was dark and damp. I closed my good eye. I gently dropped my face into my hands. Slowly, I shook my head from left to right. "How did I get here?" I remembered being in the mess hall eating what I considered to be "mess." Better yet, I was staring at it. To me, this place was named perfectly.

It brought me back to when I was six years old. One morning, I was sitting at our white kitchen table across from my mother. My lovely mother drank black coffee and read the Star Ledger newspaper, while I stared at my oatmeal as if it was pig slop. Up and down I bought the spoon from my Strawberry Shortcake bowl to my mouth. Each time I let the slop spill back into the bowl. I could not muster up the courage to eat it. She looked at me over the top of her paper.

"Eat that food Diamond. Don't play with it!" I sat there unmoved. She sipped her coffee.

"Diamond, there are starving kids in China, now eat!" Once again I sat there like a mime.