Titles
I’m under the weather and over-medicated, so please pardon me if I take a ramble:
Back in the late ’90s the internet was a bit of a wild frontier. People hadn’t really figured out what they were and weren’t allowed to get up to, and nothing that happened online seemed quite real in the classic sense.
At the time I was an impressionable youth who felt he needed more respect, so I joined the clergy. It wasn’t an easy thing to do back then, it involved some emailing back and forth as I recall, but I’m glad to see these days the process is more automated.
I’ve never performed a marriage, but I rest better knowing that I legally could. (In case of emergency.)
The discovery that the system had been simplified got me thinking about expanding my proper title. If I can scrape a few hundred dollars together I should be able to get my doctorate, making me The Reverend Doctor Skinner.
If I can then rescue a Southern Belle and get myself a Kentucky Colonelcy – Reverend Colonel Doctor Skinner – it should be a short leap to British Knighthood – Sir Reverend Colonel Doctor Skinner*.
(As a side note: I was unaware until recently that esquire was a title bestowed on people who weren’t quite Knights, but who were also better than your average Gentleman. So says wikipedia.)
*or maybe The Reverend Doctor Colonel, Sir Skinner? Hmm.