Talking shop!

Its 2.25 am. I should be in bed curled up with my husband and my little one but here I am banging away at the keys. I need to ventilate; to ask. Why are doctors so boring?

(Or maybe that’s just what I ask when I fool myself. Is it my life that’s boring?)

If I were to put my irritation aside, I could admit that I know many interesting doctors – apart from the one I married - and that my life also has many wonderful days. But I choose not to. Today, right now, I am hugely irritated.

I’m just back from a dinner treat and for company I had my happy, relaxed and wide awake husband, my kutty and a bunch of lively, smart and nice people. When the evening started out, I was feeling optimistic and was more or less determined to have some fun. But as it wore on, and more and more shop talk hit my bravely smiling self from all sides, I could feel my resolve weakening. Soon I was tuning out and could barely catch the occasional ‘secular’ joke. For the best part of two hours, I was debating with myself whether to, like my child, accept happily whatever life throws at me or give in to being what I was described by my sister-in-law recently –  the angriest woman she knows!

At a certain point in the conversation, I felt an urge to challenge the others to start any topic, anything other than medicine, and see if I didn’t have something interesting to contribute. I didn’t because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to live up to the boast.

The first choice other than the hot topic of every hour, day after day and week after week could most probably be cricket - which I knew too little about. Football during the World Cup and tennis during the Grand Slams, I could handle, but not cricket. Most of the time, I am not even aware when a match is on.

The second choice could be politics, though I doubt it. Junior doctors and politics? Do they really know what’s going on around them? Let’s just suppose there was one well-informed doc in the group, however remote the chances maybe. Would I be able to match him/her? Unlikely. Politics is not high on my list of priorities at this point in time. My toddler is in charge of the list.

The third could be the Oscar awards. That I could manage. Anybody who had even glanced through the papers would know something about the Oscars. So why didn’t we talk about them? I know what my husband would say. “Why couldn’t you initiate a discussion?” I suppose I could have but once you start tuning out, it’s difficult to tune back in. Besides, if everyone, ie everyone except you, is having a good time, why bother, you think.

The next time, though, if invited for dinner with a bunch of medicine-oozing-from-their –pores drs, I am going to read every newspaper, every magazine, and everything written on every scrap of paper that I can catch hold of (we don’t have a TV) in  the days leading up to the dinner -  and throw my challenge.

And then, God save any man, woman or beast who dares talk shop to me!