i'm sitting at my desk and i'm completely useless. my eyes are dilated and i can't read anything (yes, that's today's excuse for any typos here--i am typing this semi-blind). as it turns out, virtually everything i do at my job involves reading. there should be only another hour of this before the drops wear off.
today was my last visit to this particular eye specialist. and i can't say i'm not happy about that. this guy has always scared me a little. he's the only doctor that has ever done that to me.
it all started back at my first visit to his office around 3 years ago. he asked me what i do for a living and i told him that i am a lawyer. as he dimmed the lights, put my head in that brace thing, turned out the lights and began shining purple lights in my eyes, the doctor told me this long story his recent visit to concentration camps in poland. he said he wondered how the nazis could slaughter so many innocent people like that. eventually, he explained, he learned that the nazis believed jews were subhuman. they were viewed as parasites, useless to society. that's how they could find it so easy to kill all those people, he said, they were not people to the nazis. "and that's what i think about lawyers," he added quietly.
so there i sat, a jewish lawyer, in the dark, with my head in a brace, as a doctor worked on my eyes talking in a slow emotionless voice about how he understood where the nazis were coming from, at least when it came to lawyers. i think he was just trying to make a point about his dislike of lawyers. but at that time, as i sat there, it was utterly terrifying.
