I was halfway asleep on a very long plane ride when the flight attendant made a request. “Is there anyone on board,” she asked into the plane’s intercom, “who is a medical doctor?”

I suppose she’s had enough experience with pompous academics with Ph.D.s that she felt the need to specify medical doctor. How many times, I wondered, did a passenger raise his hand after hearing that announcement to say, ‘Yes, I am a doctor … of ethnic dance and music folkways.’ What she wanted was a real doctor, of course. There was a passenger in some kind of medical distress — I never did find out what it was — who needed help.