Editor Reddoch

It kind of bugs me (like a lot) when people that earned a doctorate in their field of studies insist on people calling them doctor so-and-so instead of Mr./Mrs./Ms./Mizz or what have you (yes, including the medical variety and not just the ivory tower chaps). And then they get all huffy about if you forget it, like you called their babies ugly. I get that they went to school for a very long time and know a ton about some very specific field (e.g., plant lobotomies, primate psychology, or ancient Chinese footwear) but what do they think the rest of us were doing while they were reading books for an extra six years, sitting on our bottoms? No we were gaining actual life experience, i.e., working and stuff. Television counts as life experience.

So I find it a little insulting when doctors wanna shove their degrees in our faces. It’s fine on your business card because it’s appropriate to mention your credentials when it is a work situation. Heck lots of people put their job on business cards or even email signatures and I guess that’s the point: at the end of the day being a doctor or a professor or pirate captain or a Kentucky chicken baron (colonel) or a judge or headmaster of Hogwarts is just a job. Unless you’re my professor or manhandle my broken body parts, you have no authority over me: quit trying to make everyone outside your realm of influence your subordinate. Quit it.

And since we know they won’t stop doing that, I propose we play it by their game. I will insist that they call me by my professional title as well. Please call me Editor Reddoch; I didn’t go to college for over a decade to be called mister.