This week saw a friend and I working a movement disorder conference where we stood and served espressos, americanos and lattes to neurologists for nine hours at a time. Believe me when I say that despite the blister on my big toe the size of my second toe and the feverish lucid nightmares in which I dreamt that people were in my bedroom demanding coffees despite my pleas for sleep, it was one of the best jobs I've ever had.
So much of it was amazing, from the numerous David Mitchell look-a-likes (and other celebrity doppelgangers: Lisa Simpson's fiance Hugh, Hugh Grant, Bishop from the US version of Being Human, Laura Linney's love interest in Love Actually, Jason Sudeikis as an a-hole, a young Michael Shannon, Ethan Embry...) to the 5:00 cookies, to all our regulars who claimed it was the best coffee they'd ever had (there was the exact same machine one booth over but hey, service with a smile and bit o' banter goes a long way).
Oh man, I'm gonna miss all those doctors so much! I only wish I could have somehow made a video montage of all the best moments along to the cloying song that played in a loop at the GE booth ALL day so that I could share it with everyone and so that on the cold lonely days I could remember the time when I was "the coffee girl" and feel just a little warmer...
I ordinarily have horrible experiences with doctors (once upon a time I suffered from depression and after overdosing one doctor wrote me a prescription for fun and another, without any insomnia complaint, gave me a bottle of sixty sleeping pills — I'm still unsure whether it was a test or maybe there was some kind of Ashton Kutcher-esque hidden camera angle) but because I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy like I just swallowed a big wool sweater (should probably get that looked at...) I'm going to dedicate this Friday Fiction to books about doctors.
Happy Friday; live long and prosper.
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann
An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Mash by Richard Hooker
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Waiting by Ha Jin
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Photo: David Mitchell (from Peep Show)
Alex Snider is a Toronto-based writer, a Contributing Editor for the Little Red Umbrella and the co-creator of the Once Again, To Zelda blog, which is where a version of this post originally appeared. You can read the rest of her posts here.
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