[This fundie blogger was doing laundry while watching a documentary on a man in a max-security prison who was on death row but had his sentence changed to life.]

As I folded a t-shirt I nodded knowingly, subconsciously reacting to his description in a spirit of camaraderie. I instinctively viewed him as someone with whom I had a shared, rare experience, knowing that the producer and the viewers of the show could never imagine what it was like because they hadn't been there like we had.

I stopped cold with a shirt half folded in my hand when I became aware of my reaction. Where did that come from? How on earth could I, a middle-class girl who's never even been to the county jail, have the faintest idea what a former death row penitentiary inmate was talking about?

And then I realized: because when I was an atheist, I lived on death row.