My kids want to be dentists. Where have I gone wrong? Oh, woe is me!
Whats so wrong with eye care? I mean, think about the absolute boom we are entering as the boomers find that their arms are too short. This has always been a win-win for optometry. Presbyopia is inevitable for everyone who makes it past that first gray hair. Thats millions of shrinking arms! And, our wonderful O.M.D. colleagues have invented a way to take perfectly happy myopes and turn them into miserable presbyopes! I love them for that!
At the same time, everyone now works on computers, increasing the nearpoint visual demand from constant to catastrophic. Ben Franklin, inventor of the bifocal, presumed we would never be stupid enough to create something we have to read that we couldnt pick up and hold where we can see it best.
Nobody knows more about seeing than optometrists. Certainly not O.M.D.s. In fact, they are now catching on that LASIK creates instant presbyopes. Now they are trying to figure out how to fix that, too. So far, their only good idea is to use lasers or lens implants to createyou got itMYOPES! Eye care is the new tech stock boom, baby!
Despite all that, and even though optometry has given my kids easy access to country clubs and fine automobiles and beaches around the globe, both of my kids want to be dentists. My son, Aaron, has just graduated among the top students of the University of Tennessee. He had a 4.0 in accounting and, in his spare time, pre-med too! He applied late to dental school at the University of North Carolina. They had around 800 out-of-state applicants for 11 positions. Yes, he was accepted. Probably would have been able to get into optometry school, too. You think? But, he hung out with a bad crowd. Dental students. He said he just felt at home. In a mouth. Oh, woe is me!
After that, my lovely and brilliant daughter, Amber (a junior honor student at Virginia Tech) thought, Hmm, dentistry. Sounds good! and, like that, she dropped her plan to consider optometry. Suddenly, no heir apparent!
Now, I know we need teeth. I mean, I use mine all the time. And, we baby boomers are determined to stay beautiful and toothy for as long as we possibly can. In fact, I have seen for years that a parent will sell a kidney to pay thousands of dollars for braces so Tiffany can be the prettiest girl at the prom, but they want to bicker over why you charge $19 a six-pack of contacts when they can get them for $18.95 on the Internet. Its OK if Chase lives with 20/40 for another year, but The dentist says he has a slight overbite. Gotta fix that!
No! I must stand up for our wonderful profession! Id rather lose my teeth instead of my eyes. After all, they can make fake teeth, but they cant make fake eyes, right? Right? Its time we demanded respect. MY kids would have bupkes if it wasnt for optometry. I have made a decent living doing something that anyone would give up teeth to do: to protect our most precious giftour vision! Even Ghandi once said, Ill give up eating, but I aint taking off these glasses, man! (or something to that effect).
A mans gotta eat? No, a mans gotta see! There are beaches to walk down, roads to drive down, beers to quaff down! How ya gonna tell Bud from bug killer? Drink it? No, my friends, you look at it. You simply must see! Think about the epidemic of obesity in our country. We dont need a low-carb diet. We need a no-teeth diet. Works every time! Dentistry beware. You got optometry on your tail!
Now, I have to go. I have my six-month dental check up. Cant miss that.
