After receiving emails from salesman, dentists, factory workers and teachers from all corners of the globe, I received one from a guy in Florida who said he’s a “provisional docent”. While many woman have fantasized about marrying a doctor or a lawyer, I don’t think there’s a little girl anywhere saying, “When I grow up, I want to marry a provisional docent.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with being a provisional docent — or maybe there is, because the truth is, I have no idea what a provisional docent is. (Hope I don’t embarrass myself, but I don’t even know what a regular docent is.)
Since the docent sent dough — he made an online contribution of a generous if off-color $10.69 — I figured I owed it to him and provisional docents the world over to Google his profession. For all I know, getting involved in provisional docenting could be illegal, which is why the whole thing is kept so hush-hush. I wisely saved the email in case some prosecutor needs it: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he’d say, “we have proof this man is a provisional docent because he outright admitted it in an email he sent to the Super Bowl Single Girl!”
So I went and I Googled and here’s what I found:
Both the Los Angeles Zoo and the Atlanta Zoo have provisional docents and they even train them! Ah, a provisional docent must be some kind of monkey, I thought.
I Googled further and found that the University of Kentucky Art Museum also has provisional docents. How backwoods of them, I thought, letting the provisional docents roam freely through the museum, swinging from sculpture to sculpture, hurling monkey dung at priceless Picassos!
A glance at Wikipedia cleared the whole mystery up: a provisional docent is a docent in training, and a docent is a volunteer guide at a museum, zoo or other setting of educational or cultural siginificance.
If I don’t get enough funds for my commercial, I now have another possible way to get into the Super Bowl.
Maybe Raymond James Stadium will take me on as a provisional docent.
