Yesterday, I wrote about dumb things prisoners have said to me.  Which made me think of my own dumb sayings over the years.  Before I started working in the corrections department, I worked for UAW-Ford Legal Services.  One of my a clients wanted her husband to adopt her child.  I explained that the biological father needed to be notified of this petition.  She kind of stammered and said she was not sure who the biological father was.  I blurted out, "Well, I assume there's a limited number of possibilities!"  Oops. Before I retired, I didn't watched Maury that often.  (Still don't)  Up until that time, having no clue who the bio dad of your child is was a completely foreign concept to me.
I often chatted with staff when I had the time. At the women's facility, there was a really cute young female officer who was talking about her son.  I asked how old her son was.  She said 16.  I exclaimed, "Wow!  You must have been like 12 when you had him!"  She said she was 14.  Oh, heck.  I said, "OK, I'm gonna go into my office and begin foot-from-mouth extraction operations".  She was pretty good-natured about it.  When I worked at Huron Valley Men's Facility, they had a large mental health population.  There was one prisoner who was nicknamed Baby Hughie, for obvious reasons.  I saw him occasionally for hearings for stuff that was basically kind of dumb.  He had to be handcuffed at this particular hearing, because he must have threatened someone or something like that.  Anyway, due to his size, the quartermaster had a hard time finding prison blues that fit him.  On this date, they were too big.  He held them up with his hands when he came in.  After the hearing, I started to write up my report.  He must have forgot to hold onto his pants, because when he stood up, I heard CO W., in his gravelly voice, bark out, "Hughes, pull your pants up!".  They had fallen to his ankles.  All the officers and other prisoners called this guy Baby Hughie.  One day I accidentally called him Mr. Hughie instead of Hughes.  It was really embarrassing.
Another time, I went up at Jackson, filling in for another hearing officer.   A prisoner came in for a hearing, very attractive, blond, feminine.  I thought she was a female.  Well she was a female, she just had not completed the transformation yet.  It never even occurred to me that this prisoner was man.  So I called him Miss, until the corrections officer gently corrected me, saying that the Department still classified the prisoner as a man.  Which should have been obvious since it was a men's facility.  I can only plead extreme mental fatigue as a defense.