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Ahh, yes. The smell of fireworks will soon be in the air. Dia Del Diablo in Guatemala is worse, but still, you have to admit there’s a distinctive aroma to fireworks and punks.

Or maybe I should say that punks with fireworks stink. Seriously, irrisponsible use of fireworks have made bottle rockets and firecrackers get a bad name. Prevent Blindness America and many eye doctors support the ban of consumer fireworks.

I grew up in Wyoming and day dreamed about fireworks as soon as the snow melted. I spend weeks in preparation for the 4th of July. Army men needed firecrackers strapped to them. Paper air planes needed bottle-rockets taped to them. Log cabins made of Popsicle sticks needed an M-80 placed inside them. Christmas wrapping paper needed to be thrown away so I could use the cardboard tube to make a bottle-rocket launcher.

Yup, I was the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s worst nightmare.

But I’m much older and wiser now. More to the point, I live in a state that outlaws bottle rockets and firecrackers, and I won’t do anything illegal because I don’t want my gun rights taken away.

So this 4th of July, make it a safe and sane holiday. Instead of whining to the government to outlaw consumer fireworks, lets sell stylish protective eyewear for everyone to wear in case they get caught as the innocent bystander to an errant firework.

And by the way, Prevent Blindness America, give me a break about that girl who lost her eye sight do to a firecracker getting tossed into a crowd. If you toss a pocket knife into a crowd you could poke an eye out, but no one is trying to outlaw pocket knives. Charge the perps- don’t take away my rights.

See another optoblog entry about fireworks.

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Ah, yes. Summer is in the air. Bar-b-cues, baseball games, blockbuster movies. Those are some things I’ve been able to enjoy so far. Not on the list is camping, traveling, and outside summer fun. You see, I’m an optometrist. I spend all day inside until about 7:00 PM. I do this six days a week.

I planned on becoming an optometrist because I had observed that they work Monday through Friday, 9-5. Not so in today’s market place. Today’s eyecare consumer demands Saturday and evening appointments so as not to interfere with their work. Sure, if they have to schedule a physical with their PCP, that might be worthy enough to take off work, but the eye doctor…nope.

Some background on my situation. I left a great Indian Health Service career to pursue my whimsical fantasy of private practice. You see, I wanted to live near extended family, but there weren’t any openings available with IHS. I had the belief system that corporate optometry is the devil, so I had to open a private practice.

Before being able to open my private practice doors, I had to work commercial while the loans and build-out fell into place. I learned too late the corporate isn’t the devil. It’s only individual optometrists who don’t practice to their potential that make a bad name for corporate. Of course, this is true for private as well.

Now, since my private practice didn’t take off for me like I was expecting, I work commercial 4 days a week and my private practice 2 1/2 days a week. No, I don’t have a ton of money. In fact, I’m up to my eyeballs in debt. My private practice is losing money and my corporate income barely covers the losses. My wife wonders if we’ll ever be able to move out of an apartment and into a house.

The only people winning is this scenario are the frame vendors, the labs, the contact lens companies, the equipment vendors, and the financing companies. Everybody but the optometrist.

My message on this Father’s Day is: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be [optometrists].” For those of you who have already committed to oppie school, I would suggest that if you for some strange reason pursue the open-cold-private-practice nightmare dream, go small. Bootstrap instead of going big because that leads to one thing: going broke.

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