I was sitting in the doctors’ waiting room early one morning because I had torn a muscle in my arm. An older-than-me man was sitting nearby. I guess he was pushing ninety. He said his name was Leo. “Leo the lion” he grinned. Then one of the doctors came in the front door, pulling an over sized briefcase on wheels and clutching numerous folders and with a bag slung over her shoulder. Clearly she was overloaded and burdened by the medical information explosion. As well as that her brain looked a bit swollen from constant professional updates. Neither Leo nor I were in a state to help her due to injury and age. I briefly thought she needed a computer geek to teach her how to access all that information digitally rather than carrying that load of paper. But Leo the older wiser man had a far better idea.
“You look like you need – – – a donkey !” he said.
Of course she did. Dr Ruth needed a donkey to carry her daily burden. What a great idea… why hadn’t I thought of it?
A donkey would be a great help for Dr Ruth. All she would need would be a donkey and generous saddlebags to hang in balanced fashion over the back of the donkey. She wouldn’t even have to lift the surgical textbooks and pharmaceutical free samples very high into the saddle bags because donkeys are conveniently short unlike say a llama or a camel. You may think that using a donkey to carry a medico’s store of knowledge would be inconvenient in a sleek hygienic medical facility. Not necessarily. In this case there was a generous strip of land at the back of the medical centre right next to the local primary school. Once Dr Ruth had unloaded Donny the donkey in her office, she could put him out to pasture at the back. All she would need would be a bale of hay, a small water trough and a donkey sized shelter hanging off the fence. Alternatively Dr Ruth could negotiate with the school to allow Donny to graze on the school oval and drink from the school wash basins which I’m sure the children would love to organise. Then at the end of the day she could load up her moke with her pathology samples and medical homework and take him home.
My own doctor was late to arrive so I had a bit of time to think. He is like The Good Doctor on TV who looks like he is 15 years old and is brilliant. It was 9am so I thought that perhaps he was having an adolescent sleep in. I began to think of other workers who needed the help of a donkey.
Lawyers going to and from court often have to carry around large numbers of books, file notes and bags full of cash. Why not use a donkey to help carry the legal load? They could be billed to the client as Asinine Assistants at a few hundred dollars an hour.
Donkeys are widely used on farms as guard animals to protect sheep from wild dogs and wolves. Why not use them in the classroom to protect children from wild dog and wolf attacks? Alternatively, in tough schools, the teacher’s burro could protect the teacher from attack by students or parents. Parent-teacher interviews could become parent-teacher-ass interviews.
One of the biggest burdens of modern life is the tax burden. Donkeys can help with this too. Taxes are just a form of money owed to some government authority for various debatable reasons. This monetary burden can, through modern technology, be conveniently stored on credit or debit cards which weigh next to nothing. Any donkey worth his or her salt lick could carry the tax load of thousands of citizens in this digital monetized form, thus reducing the tax problems of many.
Donkeys are very adaptable. They are great for carrying children and homework to and from school and can be trained as school crossing supervisors and as discipline donkeys to bray at students who arrive late. In the hospitality industry donkeys can be unconventional spruikers attracting curious customers to come into restaurants.
One donkey in Donkeybrook, Western Australia has been trained as a barista. He makes Donk-e-Spresso coffee using an automatic machine with large nose-friendly buttons and voice activated levers. But let me warn you against donkeys replacing hotel robots. Most hotel robots live in a corner of the hotel dining room or kitchen and once loaded with an order of food or drink attempt to take it to the correct hotel room. When the door is opened it will roll into the room and let the guest unload the victuals. Some hotels have tried to replace expensive robots with donkeys but the results have been disastrous. Donkeys are too smart to let say a breakfast order of cornflakes, toast or porridge go untasted and wasted. Some hotels found that their delivery donkeys were conspiring together, meeting in vacant suites and cloakrooms to eat one another’s food orders before returning to the kitchen to bray for a refill. In some cases a donkey just won’t do. But for most overworked, overburdened doctors, lawyers, teachers, students and taxpayers, donkeys are the real deal. As Leo told the doctor, you really need a donkey. We all do.
– Geoff Milton
