Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Remedial Social Skills, 101
I had to share this with you. In the “President’s Message” of our local medical society’s Bulletin, our prezzy bemoans the way we’ve grown apart as a community. We couldn’t even pick each other out of a police lineup! That is bad.
After urging our society’s members to become more cohesive, the President concludes with suggestions for change, ending with this groaner:
. . . write a biographical sketch about yourself or a colleague and send it to the Medical Society. There are great stories out there about who we are and how we got here. If we receive your work with permission to publish, it could show up in the Bulletin soon.
But that’s not the good bit. Here’s the good bit:
At the least, it will come in handy when it is time to write the obituary!
That’s not even the last sentence . . .
And on some days, that need seems to be sooner than we might have thought.
Shorter version: “Dudes. It’s getting harder and harder to research your obits, so if you want something more detailed than ‘Dr. Hoffman was an otolaryngologist who served our community for X years,’ write your own damned obituary. You’ll be dead sooner than you think.”
And people think I’m exaggerating when I say us docs have the social skills of bonsai trees.
D.
I dunno – some of the nephrologists I’ve met have had some pretty decent social skills.
(But not the retinal specialists.)
I’ve met many doctors who don’t have the social skills of a bonsai tree.
At least he got his point across. I work with a couple of people who send out memos that are utterly incomprehensible after 4 or 5 readings.
And I think you’re being too hard on bonsai trees. Granted, they’re not big talkers, but at least you know they’re not saying things about you behind your back, and they almost never try to steal your girlfriend.