Oops.

The phone rang this morning. M brought it to me, and the voice on the other end said, "Is this Dr. So-and-so?"

"Why yes it is," I answered, not without some pleasure in finally, finally, getting my due.

Let's back up just a moment. I am not actually a Dr., but I am only about four chapters of a dissertation shy of being one. (OK, so that's pretty far shy of it, but I could have finished, barring a husband and some children, right? Oh yeah, and some serious writer's block and perhaps a dearth of original ideas.) Anyway, I am at least a bona fide professor, and really, that should count for something.

When I first started my university career, being (a) female and (b) someone who looks young for her age (sometimes by as much as ten years), my students felt they were justified in calling me by my first name . . . which they most assuredly were not (perhaps I don't deserve any respect, considering that dangling modifier I just bunged in there). But even though 32 was old enough to teach, it was not old enough to call them to repentance. There were other problems as well, but let's not dwell on the negative, shall we? Suffice it to say that I've been waiting for years (almost ten, to be exact) to get some respect, in and out of the classroom.

So is it not excusable to react with a blush of pleasure when someone calls me "Dr." of her own accord?

But my joy was short-lived. The woman on the line started talking hospital this and on-call that. I should have known that on New Year's Day, no one would have a literary emergency. I told her that unfortunately I was not that kind of doctor. "Oh," she asked, "are you a nurse practitioner?" I hated to disappoint her, but no, I am not. "I am a professor," I said.

I didn't tell her I'm not even a real doctor of anything. Sic transit gloria big-head.