It wasn’t like
this idea just popped into his head all at once. Great notions
often take time
to fester, you know. It was like that with Windy Wilson a
couple of weeks back.
Our
semi-legendary
cowboy, camp cook, and storyteller might have seen this coming
on, but we
missed the signs. There was that piece in the Valley Weekly
Miracle about our
pal, Doc, receiving that honorary associates’ degree from
Jerry Hat Trick Junior
College, the one financed and named for that hockey player.
Now we knew Doc had
more degrees than a thermometer already and it puzzled us why
he needed another
one.
“Doc?” said Windy
over coffee, “that new diploma thingie you got is shore ‘nuf
nice. Does it help
you operate on folks?”
Doc
laughed, and so
did the rest of us. “Nope. Not really. All I did was make a
contribution to
their new gym. This was their way of thanking me, I guess.”
“Well you know,”
said Steve, “this changes everything. Now, instead of calling
our pal Doctor, we’ll
have to update it and call him Associate, I guess.”
“That’s kinda long
to say, isn’t it? Now if we were to shorten it to just the
first three
letters….”
“That’s not funny,
Herb!”
“Then
why are you
laughing, Doc?”
I guess we all were.
Truth was, they couldn’t trot out too many honors for Doc.
Prince of a guy.
“You know,” Windy
whispered to Steve, “I’d like to get one of them things my
ownself. How do you
do it?”
“Windy,
that’s one of
the goofy things about an honorary degree. If you think you
deserve one, you
don’t get one.”
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