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Somewhere Under the 'E'
My niece wants to be an optometrist. My brother called me late last week with the ghastly news, his voice cracked with the grief of wasted sacrifice and shattered dreams. I quietly hung up the receiver before things got embarrassing, but I, too, was staggered. What did I know about optometrists? What does anybody know? About all I can say for sure is that they all seem to be rather mousy, balding, middle-aged Rotarians. None of these attributes, I'm happy to say, apply to my niece. She's smart, pretty and friendly, athletic and musically talented. In fact, till I learned of this optometrist thing she showed no signs of deviant behaviour at all.
How did she come up with this idea? Is there some massive advertising campaign that I somehow missed while I was busy avoiding the latest athletic shoe craze? Maybe there's a recent hit movie... something with exciting music and plenty of action shots... brave optometrists striding through war torn streets... young, chisled-blonde optometrists with concerned, but attractive, expressions... rookie optometrists being counselled by their hard-bitten mentors... "You can't save everybody Perkins... some people just won't keep an extra pair for emergencies."
Perhaps she was she marked at birth with the sign of the oculist?
I haven't exactly lost sleep over this issue - given my choices I'd rather lose sleep over free agency in baseball - but I have thought it over and, frankly, I just can't figure it. I can see the fascination with, for example, dentistry. Who wouldn't want to be on the other end of the drill for a change. And just think of the mayhem you could wreak on an unsuspecting public if you were in the mood and your malpractice insurance was paid up. Not only that, but you get to wear one of those cool white shirts that button up the side of the neck - just like the Dave Clark Five wore on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Manual labour has a kind of nobility that is sometimes appealing too. Hard physical labour can be very soothing. And there's great therapeutic value to stepping freely outside the social restrictions of the professions. You get to wear whatever you like, stop shaving, and speak in grunts all the time - not just when telephone solicitors call.
Garage mechanics seem to have a pretty good time of it. I love the signs in garages that warn against going in their ‘operating room’ to see what they're up to. It gives them a chance to go for an uninterrupted smoke while forcing their victims to read and reread old tire ads.
I'm guessing that lawyers have hours of fun figuring ways of insinuating themselves into each and every facet of our waking lives and making obscene amounts of money into the bargain.
How about architects? Every time I pass our local library I know that somewhere on the Riviera the guy who designed that insult to common decency just busts a gut whenever he thinks about it.
I could go on. In fact for most any career I could, without thinking too hard, imagine quite amusing ways to fill the unforgiving minutes. But what, pray tell, is so jolly about pointing at eye charts and adjusting nosepieces? After the first few the novelty has got to pale. Even if you were to playfully give someone the wrong prescription you wouldn't be around to watch the fun as they bumped into strangers and misread traffic signs.
You could, I suppose, dress up in jodhpurs, and effect one of the more brutal German accents while giving someone their eye exam. "YOU ARE WRONG!" you could shout, "YOU VILL TRY AGAIN!" as you crack the side of your leg with your riding crop. But I think business would suffer. Not many people would come back a second time and I'm not certain you would want to see the ones who did.
I haven't, in my periodic chats with my niece, mentioned my misgivings and she, perhaps wisely, has refrained from discussing career choices with me. Of course there's no talking to my brother at all. Even now he's probably searching her room for signs of demonic possession. Though I doubt that she's been caught up in subversive cult practises, it is a little suspicious and more than a bit worrisome that all optometrists tend to resemble all other optometrists. Maybe they're all interchangeable.
I can't imagine an optometrist as the life of the party - or at least any party I'm likely to attend - and I've never heard of one being mentioned in dispatches from the front. On the positive side, neither do you hear of optometrists cracking under the pressure and ending up on the bad side of the headlines. They're just sort of... there... like pigeons.
Judging by my niece they aren't born to blandness, they must have it thrust upon them at eye school. My biggest fear is that round about her second year she'll get that nembutal-calm, washed out look the profession seems to require. I'm not altogether sure I'll recognize her when she finally graduates from good ol' Retina U so maybe I'd better just say my good-byes now. For my brother's sake I hope her fingerprints are on file somewhere.
- 30 -
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