the perks of being 4 foot 11

Only a Donkey

published on 2 February 2018

this was a story that my grandmother told me, after my family visited her hometown a couple of years ago;

~

My home sat in the clearing between the face of a large mountain and a lush forest, an ideal location to place a village; many people would pass through it on their travels, and apparently that's where this story came from; a long time before I was born, a man came our town and made a hollow in the mountain face to keep something hidden there, on top of hit he placed a decent sized bolder and into it he carved the words "only a man who is a donkey will move this", 

you see in this time being called a Donkey was one of the worst insults, because the purpose of a donkey was only to shift loads from one place to another, it wasn't as majestic as a horse nor did it have usefulness like a cow or the strength of a bull,  (- just a reminder that we do not discriminate against animals like this anymore)

And simply because there was this sign carved into the boulder no one wanted to move it, and so the boulder remained, untouched by both people and time, until 

There was a boy in our village who was a little strange, maybe he had autism (keep in mind that mental illness was not well understood nor did people in poor villages at the time appreciate anyone who was out of the ordinary/couldn't perform tasks properly) 

He was lanky and had a dark tan from playing all day in the sun, instead of receiving the little education that he was entitled to, and spoke with a funny lisp that a lot of the villagers teased him about. when he turned eighteen and couldn't find a job in the city he returned to our little village and continued to grow older and more useless. His mother, weakened by age and little income, begged him to return to the city and find work so that he could change his and her reputation, but he refused and remained a carefree adult, I deep down knew that it hurt him to hear the horrible things that people would say about him; especially after they started calling him a lazy 'Donkey' 

When he turned twenty three, he was so sick of being pelted with insults by the villagers that he finally stood in the center of our little travelers inn and announced "I am the man who is a donkey and I will move the boulder" 

And so he and everyone in the village gathered at the mountain face ready for him to reveal what was hidden there. The boy marched up to the rock mass and gave it a massive shove, it didn't move, he tried again and it moved  half an inch; this continued on for a longer time, and the villagers grew angsty with anticipation to see what was in the mountain, they even offered to help him move it but the boy remained determined and said "if you move the boulder then you will be a donkey too" (that certainly made them stand still)

Finally, after a solid half hour of work, he managed to roll the boulder out of the way and behind it were gemstones and gold piled so high that it spilled from the hollow, so much that he was a rich man for the rest of his life, with the money he built a better home for his mother and invested in a farming business, (both of which still stand in that village today) 

and the villagers never called him a donkey again

hope you liked it 

Brownbird xx