But just don't call me "Doctor." It annoys me. My office is the only place I introduce myself as "Doctor Khorram." Pretty much everywhere else, I'm David. It jolts me when someone I know calls me "Doctor" or worse, "Doc." It makes me feel like a piece of meat (and not in a good way) -- like I'm a commodity, just some guy in a white lab coat with no other function or capacity except as a dispenser of medical care. It's fine with me if you call me "Doctor Khorram" if I'm not on a first name basis with you. But be warned that I hate the free-standing label-as-name: "Hello, Doctor," "How's it going, Doctor," "Is Doctor there?" And please save "Doc" for the guy serving whiskey in the saloon. It's a particularly disorienting title here in our multi-accented island, where I'm wondering, "Did she just call me 'Doc' or 'Duck'?"As the Elephant Man famously cried, "I am not an animal! I am a human being!"
(For those of you who feel "David" is too intimate, or that it doesn't appropriately reflect your esteeem for me, I'll give you a break. You can call me "dk," which my staff does, or alternatively "Dr. K" or "Dr. D." See how flexible and accomodating I am.)
2 comments:
As Scooby would say, rut ro!
I like to use Doc for my doctor friends -- mostly in the spirited manner I recall Bugs Bunny.
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Also, was reading your book the other day, and while I don't eat the stuff and never thought it exactly health food or anything, I didn't know that Spam was that horrifying. My wife is known to eat it and give it to our kids sometimes, so I've since handed down a dad decree banning the stuff from our house.
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