The Medical Slave Trade

I was covered with dust and dead spiders. My chore at the farm had been to organize the tack room/office. Jill the wonderful owner of His Barn had just returned with her trail riders and was now letting the ponies in from the field. She opened the gate and all the ponies quietly filed en masse into the barn and then split like billiard balls into their correct stall. It always amazes me to watch them do this as though choreographed. One pony sauntered in wearing a muzzle. it was a big plastic contraption around his nose, just like what you see vicious dogs wear to prevent biting.

What could this pony have done to deserve this muzzle? He seemed like such a nice pony. Had he been attacking the other ponies, fighting over his acre of grass? Or worse, had he bitten Jill, the hand that fed him?

"What's with the muzzle?" I asked.
"Oh that's because he's fat," she said, "It keeps him from overeating in the field."
Well of course I had images of the new billion dollar industry I could form curing obesity by developing a similar contraption for people. Asherel could decorate it with patterned duct tape.
"It has a little hole at the bottom so he can eat a little grass, but he can't gorge," she continued explaining.

Perfect, I thought. it would be like an enforced Weight Watchers plan. The size of the hole could be expanded as people began to lose weight and get a better idea of portion control. I could have graduated muzzlers based on the number of pounds one wanted to lose, and how quickly one wanted to shed them. I could call it the "Weight Grate". The marketing slogans were endless- "Put your muzzle where your mouth is", or "Take the bite out of fat", or "Use it and lose it!" 

I'd had a brief scare while cleaning the barn office. One of Jill's volunteers came in, and I noticed he had a health care logo on his shirt. He worked in the medical field.
"Hi," he said, "I guess Jill isn't here?"
"No, she is on a trail ride right now."
"Ah, I'm here to say goodbye to take a last ride with my patients."
I glanced at the medical logo. I thought it said he worked in I.T. (Computers), but maybe he took a personal interest in the facilities' patients as well.
"Oh, that's nice," I said.
"Yeh....being sold so I wanted to have one last ride."
Sold? He was selling patients? I wondered if the authorities knew about this! I glanced at the phone. I was cornered in the office. This slave trader could be eyeing me as well.
Keep him talking....that is what the murder mystery writers all say you should do with the villain. Stall for time, and develop a rapport. They were less likely to kill you if you kept babbling.
"Why are you selling them?" I asked, my voice squeaking just a little.
"Down-sizing," he said.
Oh it was worse than I thought. he was selling the weak and infirm to reduce the load on his facilities 'cash flow! Despicable! Scum!
"Yeh, I've been riding Patience for years."
"Wait....is Patience a horse?"
He looked at me like I was the slave trader, and a dumb one at that.
"Yes, the one in that stall over there."
Oh praise God. I was saved from a fate worse than death.

But I thought of a second entrepreneurial venture with the horse muzzle. People like me, so quick to speak and make fools of themselves could benefit greatly from something that hampered quick and easy speech, snapped on over that flapping tongue. I remember a friend once telling me, "Vicky, if I didn't know you were smart, I would think you were really not."

I wondered why God put me on Earth. Could it be just for comic relief to a serious world? I know you may think I am making the patients/patience story up, but it really happened. That is honestly the split second thought that coursed through my brain. I also thought of my poor sister, doped up on pain killers with pancreatitis, hoping that today she will be allowed her first sip of water in two days. 'Patients' and 'Patience' are actually a lot more interlinked than you would think on first blush.

Ecclesiastes 7:8

 ⁸ The end of a matter is better than its beginning,
   and patience is better than pride.