WERESHEEP

One day a few years ago I picked up a personal training client. In this story I will call him Larry. I have a duty of care to make sure that I don't injure or in any other way cause harm to my clients so it is necessary at an initial consultation for them to fill out a questionnaire about their general health so I can find out any underlying problems they might have.

This consists of a number of yes or no questions covering the major issues such as heart disease, diabetes, blood pressure, joint injuries etc. At the end there is a box for the client to write anything else they think might affect their partaking in exercise.

"So, Larry. You have ticked 'no' to most of the questions. That's good. But at the bottom here you have put in the box 'I am a weresheep'. Would you care to tell me a little bit more about that?"

"Yes Doc. Sure thing."

"I'm not a doctor. But please, do carry on."

"Right coach. I'm fairly OK most of the time, but every full moon I am powerless to stop myself taking on sheep form and rampaging about the neighbourhood going 'baaaa', eating people's grass and generally being shit scared of anything that moves."

"I see. Well, that is an unusual problem and I sympathise. But to be honest, I don't think that will have much effect on your training. As long as you avoid training when it is a full moon you should be fine. Maybe you should get a little patch of grass in your house and when the night in question comes around, get someone you trust to lock you in."

"Yes, thanks coach. I do already do something along those lines. I have had this for quite some time now."

"Oh, right. So why did you feel the need to tell me?"

"Well, the thing is, even when I am in human form, I still have sheepish tendencies. It's especially bad when I am confronted with a decision that I can't avoid. Then I will tend to lose it and I feel like I want to run around in little zigzags, desperately trying to find a group of people to latch onto so that I don't have to make the decision as an individual."

"Hmmm. To be fair Larry, that sounds pretty similar to what an awful lot of humans do anyway, be they ovine lycanthropes or not."

"What, so you don't think that will affect my training?"

"Well I don't think so Larry. I will tell you what you need to do and as long as you follow that, you will get the results you desire. In fact, folks who do what I tell them to the letter are the ones who get the best results so it may well be that your lack of independence is a bonus in this case."

"Thanks Doc, that's a weight off my mind."

"I'm not a doctor, Larry. Let's crack on shall we?"

Share on Facebook