Overeducated and unemployed

I shouldn’t really blog about my friend Daisy’s husband, Darren, because Daisy said that I supposedly implied in one of my posts that he was impotent and that Darren got upset about it. AS IF I WOULD DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT! (In any case, that post has now been removed, so I am blameless on that front).

Example 1 of Darren’s, um, lack of common sense
Recently on a holiday in Argentina, Darren put a $2000 laptop in the trunk of a taxi. When the cab driver had driven him to his destination, Darren got out, paid the man, and was surprised when the cab driver pulled away like lightning, taking Darren’s laptop with him. First thoughts: would anyone, and I mean anyone, put a laptop in the trunk of an Argentinian taxi? Darren says that all his bank information was on the lap top, but that the password is ‘uncrackable’ and that the thief probably won’t be able to get into his files.

Example 2
After fifteen odd years as a bio-chemist, Darren’s academic career has hit the skids, and he finds himself unemployed. During his last job in bio-chemistry, he claimed that he didn’t like working with his academic colleagues, and tortured himself with the idea that everyone he worked with hated him and wanted to fire him. Once that mystery was cleared up, (everyone did, he was), he decided to give academia the heave ho, and declared that from now on he would work only in jobs that involved no contact with bossy supervisors and people who pressurize you to perform and publish articles etc., which was then modified to not working with people in general. From this job spec, he came up with the bright idea of becoming an MD. Maybe the fantasy was fuelled by those ideas men have of nubile nurses like the one above, (hello, they now wear horrendous loose smocks printed with Mickey Mouse designs and creaking plastic footwear!) Even after several nights ‘assisting’ in the ER of Johns Hopkins Hospital and seeing eyeballs and brains dripping out of skulls, Darren was still adamant that the career was his chosen path. I guess he didn't focus too hard on the fact that being an MD means that you do, unfortunately, also have to work with quite a few live/uncomatose people too, like other doctors and nurses, not to mention live, complaining, sue your ass off if you so much as look at me funny Americans.

Determined to make his dream a reality, he applied to med school in the US. He got good test scores, but because he is forty-two, they weren’t too interested. Then he thought, hang on, I’m British, maybe I can study in the UK, because it would only cost about $3,000 a year. Unfortunately, they would not let him become a doc in Britain because you have to have lived there for two consecutive years before applying for university, otherwise you have to pay 30,000 pounds per year in fees, because you are considered a foreign student!

Ho hum. Not to be deterred, he applied to go to med school in Australia (the couple are Aussie citizens), and once he'd flown out to Adelaide for an interview, been rejected and come back with his tail between his legs, Daisy told him to pull his socks up and told him that she thought he might be better suited to dental school. He clung onto this idea like a drowning man clinging to a raft and is now making applications.

Everyone laughs hysterically when he mentions his dental dreams and says, "You’re not coming anywhere near my mouth!" I said, politely, “I’m sure you’d be very good, but you’re not, um, very fast are you?” Bear in mind this is a man who took THREE YEARS to tile a bathroom and put in a bath, while the rest of the family had to wash in a sink in the basement.

Hmm...I wish him the best of luck in finding a dental job that does not require working with people!

Why oh why doesn’t he consider some of the really golden careers for the misanthrope, which are:

a. taxidermist
b. grave digger
c. street sweeper
d. sewage processor
e. dog kennel owner

I’m keeping it buttoned.