The ageing process

When I first put on my white coat and joined the ranks of my colleagues in the hospital, I was actually reckoned, oddly enough, one of the youngest in my department. All my other colleagues were at the very least five or six years senior to me and I felt like a relative child - and quite a naive rube - in comparison. They seemed so much more knowledgeable and experienced than I was - while I still felt like a blind, stupid fool playing around with the lives of my hapless patients.

That was actually more than three years ago and it came as a relative shock to me when I realized that I had somehow turned into one of the seniors. That alarmingly ageing thought was brought painfully back to me when Yummy Yee, the intern I mentioned earlier, kept on referring to me as sir or boss and continued calling me with the prefix doctor despite my reassurances that he could call me by name. Not only did the sir immediately relegate me to the ranks of wizened old men with their cigars and smoking jackets, the fact that he constantly referred to me as an all-knowing, all-seeing prescient galled me to the bone. Didn't he know I was plainly a mindless, prattling fool who only wanted to get a hand down his tight pants? What the hell did I know about tuberous sclerosis? :)