Holiday Travails. An Interview With I. M. Trapt, M.D.
January 2013, Docs Amongst Us, human interest subsidiary of DweebMD. Dee Essemfour interviews I. M. Trapt, M.D., shrink, researcher and regular contributor to the esteemed science journal, Family Hell.
DE: So, Dr. Trapt, did you follow your own advice, and stay away from family over the holidays?
IMT: Of course not. Usually we spend only a week with my side in Atlanta. But this year, we added a second to take a cruise with Hubby’s. Fourteen consecutive days. I barely survived.
DE: How come? Don’t get along?
IMT: (laughs) More like, too much of a good thing. I’m used to lots of solitude. I didn’t get any. The withdrawal— I don’t want to talk about it. But, speaking of horror: I’m done flying.
DE: Oh? Problem with your flights?
IMT: When isn’t there a problem? You know shell shock? With this last trip, I got flight shock.
DE: What happened?
IMT: Went to check-in on-line the day before departure to find— Excuse me, to NOT find our flight. Vanished. Gone. Poof.
DE: No!
IMT: Eliminated. Without notice. We’re talking two days before Christmas. I couldn’t breathe. My heart raced. I actually left my body, to hover up by the ceiling. I watched myself stare at the laptop screen.
DE: Were you able to rebook?
IMT: Oh sure. If we flew on the 27th. Given we were departing Atlanta for Ft. Lauderdale on the 28th, I seriously considered it.
DE: Ha! What’d you do?
IMT: I flashbacked. I raged. I rented a car one-way.
DE: You drove the eleven hundred miles to Atlanta?!
IMT: Not me. Hubby.
DE: Gotcha. Mine’s like that too.
IMT: It was awesome! Hubby kept his pocketknife, Son kept his electronic devices turned on and I kept my seat in the unlocked and reclined position. And, no smarmy pilot announcements thanking us for the honor of screwing us!
DE: That’s a long drive.
IMT: But it passed so… naturally.
DE: What do you mean?
IMT: There’s something surreal, don’t you think, about departing in subzero snow and a few hours later deplaning in subtropical sun?
DE: (dropping her voice into Rod Serling register) “…Your next stop... the Twilight Zone.” DOO doo DOO doo, DOO doo DOO doo….
IMT: (laughs) Right! As we drove south through four temperature zones, the snow became sleet became rain. When we arrived two days later in Atlanta, it was clear in the low fifties. The sun set at five forty five! Instead of four thirty. My body said, Flying is for the birds!
DE: Ha!
IMT: My twelve-year old nephew kept texting for updates. Location, weather, jokes, photos, puns, mileage countdown, you name it, we texted it!
DE: So what about that cruise?
IMT: My in-laws took our family and Hubby’s sister’s family on a cruise in honor of their 60th. They still get along! Can you imagine? What an achievement!
DE: Congrats to your in-laws!
IMT: It was a three-generation extravaganza.
DE: Where did you go?
IMT: The Caribbean: Puerto Rico, St. Martin and St. Thomas. Seven days of heat, sun, humidity, and glittering teal water. Around the islands anyway.
DE: Nice!
IMT: Basking like a lizard on the balcony taking in the horizon-less blue of the Atlantic, great food whenever we wanted to eat, room tidied twice a day, staff on tap for every demand, what’s not to love, right?
DE: Don’t tell me you didn’t.
IMT: Oh, I did! For two days.
DE: Then what?
IMT: I felt… like Woody Allen getting his shoes shined against his will.
DE: Explain.
IMT: Say I wanted ice in the room. It wasn’t an option to get it myself. I had to call room service. While waiting for delivery, I’d read a Matt Helm by Donald Hamilton.
DE: I don’t know that author.
IMT: Too bad! Excellent 60’s noir. Gritty, with lashings of tongue-in-cheek. So, Matt finds himself looking down the barrel of a loaded gun, held by his partner— Tap tap. It’s the room attendant, empty-handed. He smiles, I smile, he requests the ice bucket, I hand it over, Thank you Madame, Oh, thank you. Matt drags the body out of the line of sight from the window, stashes his partner’s gun in his waistband and— Tap tap. We exchange polite smiles, I accept the ice, Thank you so much, My pleasure Madame.
DE: I don’t see the problem.
IMT: There was no escape from the “luxury” of waiting, being interrupted, making nice and having no purpose! The rub became agonizing, like not being able to change out of wet jeans.
DE: What’d you do?
IMT: You mean, besides surrender? Well, when I wasn’t visiting, eating or snoozing, I people watched. Paying customers. Staff: room attendants, entertainers, wait staff, the peons and bosses. The interactions. Everybody with an agenda. Nothing like being trapped on the open ocean in a huge floating hotel holding 4500 people— most of them morons— to generate that fine hint of menace. We’re talking the perfect setting for a locked room mystery. If only I were a novelist!
DE: Did you ever get off the boat?
IMT: Oh sure. For about five hours each port. I thought cruises were transportation, a way of getting to a destination. But, no. Cruises are all about... cruising.
DE: So I take it you enjoyed yourself so much you were sorry to return to work?
IMT: Ha ha. Actually, it was a big relief to get back in harness and re-assume the mantle of responsibility and purpose! I must have been a sled dog in a previous life.
DE: That’s good, because didn’t your town get hit with a blizzard while you were sunning and funning?
IMT: It was eighty-six and muggy in Ft. Lauderdale the morning we flew out. We arrived home to single digits and everything blanketed in white. One of the gas stations on Rt. 9 was missing its fuel island canopy. The storm had wrenched it off and tossed it into the neighboring business’s parking lot!
DE: What a re-entry!
DE: Yeah, you’re not kidding. Back to work the next day, the pace ferocious from the two-week backlog. The transition was so abrupt— DOO doo DOO doo, DOO doo DOO doo! (dropping her voice)— Your next stop… the Twilight Zone! In deep winter, I’ll remember summer: the heat, the sun, the long days…. But the memory is so far in the past, I wonder, Did it really happen? The vacation was only a month ago, but Was it a dream?
DE: You’ll have proof it wasn’t when the refund for that disappeared flight shows up on your next credit card statement!
IMT: ACK! Don’t remind me! (Snorts) I’ll believe that refund when I see it.
DE: (laughs) Welcome back Dr. Trapt and thanks for speaking with us.
IMT: Thank you.