Sometimes the best pain-relieving therapy is a tasteless joke. As a painful relic of the slave trade, we usually joke with the apocryphal tale of a Fante man in a slave castle in Cape Coast who humbly implored an unattended gun to be still while he visited the toilet. He had been programmed to respect the owner of the gun and all things that belong to the master. If he would ask for permission from the master before doing anything, he would accord his property the same respect.