Have you ever seen any old “Saturday Night Live” shows? I’m talking about the vintage shows that featured the original Not Ready for Prime-Time Players, guys like John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd. Some have argued that the comedians that comprised the original cast of SNL were the best ensemble ever put on the air. Like many opinions, that one is up for debate, but, that initial team did produce some fantastic comedy, and we’re lucky we can still see some of those hilarious pieces today.
When “Saturday Night Live” first started, one of its most frequent hosts was Steve Martin. (By the way, here’s some trivia for you: George Carlin was the very first host of SNL, but the show wasn’t live. NBC put him on a seven-second delay because they were afraid of what might “slip out.” That’s probably not a bad idea when dealing with Carlin.) One early sketch involved Martin working as a physician during the Middle Ages. It was quite funny because no matter what the ailment, Martin’s doctor ordered the patient to be bled with leeches. It was his go-to solution for everything, and it showed (in a hilarious way) how fair we’ve come with our job training.
Think about it: any Wichita resident taking a physician job today would need almost 10 years of job training. That is a huge time and financial commitment for anybody to make, and it is no wonder doctors are held in such high esteem in our culture. After all, a physician’s job is filled with all degrees of stress, from the diagnosis to the paperwork to the continuing education. It literally never ends.
So the next time you are grumbling about your own job training, just remember a physician has to go through a lot more. If they stopped, well, it wouldn’t be long before we were all stocking up on leeches. That would really be scary.
