Doctors and B.A.s

It seems like it'd be a crazy thing, my addiction to "Inked," A&E's reality show based on Hart and Huntington Tattoo Company, the first tattoo shop to open in a Las Vegas casino.

I mean, the "body artists" and the "receptionists" are fooling around with squirt bottles one minute, and at each other's inked throats the next.

There are catfights and hook ups and a lot of drinking...out of coffee cups. Oh, and there's some tattooing.

This show makes me sentimental. It reminds me of my (short lived) PhD program at Northern Arizona University, where the bottom line was totally the same. Where both are the centers of their universes. The people involved are the most important people, as is the dialogue, and the day-to-day goings on, not to mention the mission.

Both worlds take themselves very seriously.

They have no idea the other, or any other, exists.

When I watch "Inked," I relive my doctoral days, relieved to have left them behind. And speaking of "behind," thanks to the show, I'm thinking about getting a little monarch butterfly...