It wasn’t like this idea just popped into his head all at once. Great notions often take time to fester, you know. It was like that with Windy Wilson a couple of weeks back.

Our semi-legendary cowboy, camp cook, and storyteller might have seen this coming on, but we missed the signs. There was that piece in the Valley Weekly Miracle about our pal, Doc, receiving that honorary associates degree from Jerry Hat Trick Junior College, the one financed and named for that hockey player. Now we knew Doc had more degrees than a thermometer already and it puzzled us why he needed another one.

“Doc?” said Windy over coffee, “that new diploma thingie you got is shore ‘nuf nice. Does it help you operate on folks?”

Doc laughed, and so did the rest of us. “Nope. Not really. All I did was make a contribution to their new gym. This was their way of thanking me, I guess.”

“Well you know,” said Steve, “this changes everything. Now, instead of calling our pal Doctor, we’ll have to update it and call him Associate, I guess.”

“That’s kinda long to say, isn’t it? Now if we were to shorten it to just the first three letters….”

“That’s not funny, Herb!”

“Then why are you laughing, Doc?”

I guess we all were. Truth was, they couldn’t trot out too many honors for Doc. Prince of a guy.

“You know,” Windy whispered to Steve, “I’d like to get one of them things my ownself. How do you do it?”

“Windy, that’s one of the goofy things about an honorary degree. If you think you deserve one, you don’t get one.”