Woolly Unemployed

Years ago, Mr. Hanson, a man of high expectations and short temper, hired me to lend a hand on his sheep ranch. It was a modest operation, the kind where the sheep outnumber the humans by a scandalous margin, and the humans, therefore, feel compelled to boss the sheep around to reassert their dominance.

My duties were vague at best and as indefinite as a Nevada horizon, stretching from “helping out” to “staying out of trouble,” to “not getting in the way,” and I was doing a passable job until the day he fired me outright. It all started with a harmless task–he handed me a crook and sent me to the pasture with strict instructions to count the sheep.

“It’s important,” he said, though his smirk suggested otherwise.

Nevertheless, I took my duties seriously as a fellow who knows he’s being underpaid can. The pasture stretched before me like a sea of woolly sameness as I began my count with vigor, pointing at each creature with the crook like a sort of amateur shepherd savant.

“One, two, three…” I counted aloud, determined to prove my mathematical prowess to the only audience available—the sheep.

By the time I reached 37, something peculiar began to happen. Each successive sheep seemed to blur into the next, the bleating like the world’s most hypnotic lullaby. I felt my eyelids grow heavy, my sense of purpose dimming.

The last conscious thought I had was fuzzy, something like, “Is 37 enough sheep for one ranch? Feels like plenty.”

When Mr. Hanson eventually found me, I was facedown in the grass, drooling slightly and snoring softly. His arrival roused me, but not gently—with a boot to the butt and a look in his eye that suggested he’d spent a good ten minutes trying to decide if he should wake me up or bury me right there.

“You’ve got some nerve,” he growled. “I sent you to count sheep, not join them.”

Staggering to my feet, brushing off the dirt and grass, trying to salvage what dignity I had left. “Well, Mr. Hanson,” I said, rubbing my eyes, “the way I see it, I was doing both. I counted them until I could count no more, and then I did what any reasonable person would do in the presence of 37 sheep—I took their advice and rested.”

“Fired,” he snapped. “You’re fired.”

And that was that. As I trudged away from the pasture, I couldn’t help but think I’d learned a valuable lesson. When counting sheep, you’re enumerating the seconds till you’re back in the unemployment line.