Life Advice From My Excessively-Wealthy Optometrist

My medical copays fund his yacht.

Sixteen years ago, I walked into my optometrist’s office for the first time upon a coworker’s recommendation. It’s located in a sketchy strip mall featuring a comic book shop and a McDonald’s. Inside, it still has the original 1970’s shiny foil-striped wallpaper from the first owner of the optometry practice.

“Why aren’t you changing the wallpaper?” I asked.

He shrugged, “Why would I do that? It’s perfectly fine.”

I looked at the brown and beige machines that do…I’m not sure what they do other than terrify the shit out of you when they blast a puff of air in your eyeballs. Upon questioning his lack up equipment upgrades, he said that the newer technology still requires some manual calculations, and these machines do them anyway.

Homeboy drove a fancy shmancy car and yet, was still a cheap mofo. He’s my kind of people. I became a patient for life.

I popped in this past week for my annual exam. Last thing I need during a pandemic is to run out of contact lenses because I need eyeballs to run from the zombie apocalypse scheduled later in 2020. In a short visit, I learned many life lessons.

Lesson #1: Fuck formal education. The tuition is too high relative to the income it provides. Instead, ensure you have a rich father who buys property and will let you live in a house for free.

His son Neil is the optometry-equivalent of a dental hygienist. He says there’s no point in his son following his footsteps; the cost of optometry school today doesn’t compensate for the tuition. “What’s the point?” he asked me. “Neil can just run the day to day things when I’m not here.”

Instead, Neil has learned the value of hard work (if 6 hours a week counts as work) to afford the house he doesn’t pay for.

Lesson #2: Own a medical practice but only squeeze in patients between rich people activities.

I’m not quite sure why my optometrist works anymore. I think he sees at most five patients a week. He explained, “Well, what else am I gonna do? I get up, grab some breakfast on the pier, then I hang out on the boat for a couple of hours. Then I head home, shower, and swing by here before heading out for golf.”

He then let out a laugh, like he had nothing else to fill the time between boating and golfing so he might as well swing by his own optometry practice.

Lesson #3: Watch out for your young wife’s pets.

My optometrist isn’t very fond of his wife. She’s twenty years younger, Russian, and clearly has his balls in a glass case. He laments how much they fight and how much she spends.

Most of all, he complains about her cat. If the cat could talk, I’m guessing it would complain about him. For the average couple, cheating or money habits create a rift. This cat is the asshole creating a divide. I give the creature props; you have to be an ultra feline jerk to break up a marriage.

Lesson #4: Own lots of properties and let your kids live in some of them while you make passive income off the others.

There really isn’t much to say about this life lesson. Simply buy houses. That’s all. Everyone can do it.

My optometrist likes to tell me about all the cities where he buys properties, like he’s giving me insider tips. We live in southern California; unless you own a diamond-encrusted kidney and sell it, you’re not buying loads of properties. (She types as she furiously bedazzles her kidneys between paragraphs.)

Lesson #5: Any time you go on vacation, make sure the hotel has a hot tub.

I’m not quite sure why older, rich white dudes like hot tubs so much. My optometrist is obsessed. Every vacation story or advice includes sentences like:

“Visiting Catalina Island is great for kids. At the end of the day, they can hang out in the hot tub.”

“Skiing in Mammoth is great after the holidays. At the end of the day, everyone can hang out in the hot tub.”

“We took a great little trip up to Napa. At the end of the day (wait for it…wait for it…), you can have a glass of wine and hang out in the hot tub.”

Lesson #6: When potentially divorcing, keep sentimental objects at work.

All of the aforementioned hot tub stories included memory books and photo albums for my viewing enjoyment. I asked him why he kept the 1985 Ski Vacation album next to the contact lens samples.

He explained that he brought them to work to avoid losing them in a divorce. Not the divorce. Losing them in a divorce. My optometrist treats the end of his marriage with the same predictability as an earthquake; you don’t know when it’ll happen…but it’ll definitely happen.

I think my dentist, pediatrician, and gynecologist are holding out on me. Why haven’t they provided me valuable life lessons like my super dope optometrist? Next time I go in for a pap smear, I’ll make sure to ask about luxury travel and best practices for rental property financing.