By: Martin Merritt, esq.
Past President, Texas Health Lawyers Association
Past Chair, DBA Health Law Section
martin@martinmerritt.com
“Please Tell Me you Didn’t. . . How to Keep Clients Out of the Jailhouse, Poorhouse and Lawyers Out of the Nuthouse” -Blog
As you can tell, I love talking about health law & litigation issues, and general wellbeing, if you have any health law questions or better yet, need to refer a case, just call or drop me an email and I will happily talk.
I don’t travel for “fun.” I honestly don’t think I understand how either one works anymore, (“travel” or “fun.”) I just go where business drags me, and last week, it was Miami Beach.
The Grinch. Sitting in a suit and tie on a hotel balcony overlooking the blue ocean, I was waiting to testify in a $36 million federal criminal healthcare fraud trial. I began to wonder if I was going to get called at all.
Checking my phone was a “coin toss” of sorts: “Heads, I go to the beach; Tails I go get cross examined by a federal prosecutor.” I am not sure which a Grinch like me would prefer. This was, after all, Spring Break, in Miami. (Grinch’s don’t like “fun,” especially “other people’s.”)
“The Who’s Down in Whoville liked spring break a lot!
But the Grinch on the Fontainebleau balcony, did not!”
Then I began to wonder, “where was the noise?” I opened up my phone to discover that Miami Beach had run spring breakers off, using a combination of curfew and DUI checkpoints.
Now, although this is a little like putting burglar bars on your windows, it won’t stop spring break from coming, it will move “Whoville” down the road to Ft. Lauderdale. (And that’s a “them” problem.) A slight “Grinchy” smile came over my face.
Then, a “fresh hell.” I was just settling into my Grinchy happy place, contemplating my good fortune, and that’s when fresh hell came wafting through the door of the connected suite. The unmistakable noise of a beast more “beastly” than spring break: a bachelorette party.
I don’t know much about bachelorette parties, but apparently, “screaming” as if at a Beatles concert, as each one arrived, is a mandatory form of greeting. I thought to myself:
That’s one thing the Grinch hated most of all!
NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!
I went out to check in the hallway, and found some of the girls, about 25, to be the nicest, happiest people you would ever meet. So, I slinked my Grinchness back to my room. (Seems it is hard to stay mad, when we are forced to humanize our “tormentors.”)
Human Irritant. The day bed I had reserved was wonderfully “spring-break free.” But another infestation of human irritant had set up camp right next to me, a bikini photo shoot.
I just shook my head in despair, and tried my best to channel Billie Bob Thornton’s character in the Paramount Plus show, Landman, “Oh, you’ve gotta’be shittin’ me.” It isn’t that I don’t like swimsuit models, it’s just that me paying attention to them, would be like my 20 year-old self dreaming of Ferrari’s. (I don’t hate myself enough to put myself through that.)
Besides, it wasn’t the models, it was “the cameraman,” yelling incessant directions against the sound of crashing waves at the models and overshooting the mark. The noise resonated through my ear holes, then travelled down my Grinch spine.
The Flight back from hell. We boarded the American Airlines plane from Miami at 3:30 p.m. Well, it was supposed to be at 3:30 p.m. We were all in our seats, ready to takeoff, when the captain announced, “we are having a little maintenance issue,” please stand by.
Considering that planes are flipping upside down nowadays days, I began the delay 100% on the side of “let’s not rush the maintenance.” I did discover, however, as the delay ticked by, I could be “flexible” on this point.
Then the captain announced, that we needed to change a tire, “should take and hour,” he said. “We will be back in the air in no time,” he said. But. . . we have to pile “off the plane,” he said.
It is apparently not a good idea to jack up a passenger jet with people inside. (Maybe they could have checked the tires before we got on, but I don’t really do airplane maintenance.) I amused myself with the idea that it would have been hilarious if a “AAA” truck pulled up on the tarmac.
But after we were told that maintenance had brought a new tire, but forgot the tools, I thought about calling AAA myself.
“Fair enough,” we passengers all seemed to decide together. But “fair” is also relative to “space and time.” I think Einstein said that. We all stood there at the gate, for four hours, as we watched out the window, as the maintenance crew stood around looking at the tire and doing nothing, waiting for tools.
We had to wait another 2 hours inside the airplane. The captain announced, they had to figure out how to turn on the machine that goes “ping”. (At least that’s the way I heard it.)
But, he “thinks the plane is safe to fly,” he said, but with less certainty than before. That was good enough for me, as I had completely surrendered at this point.
As I sat there, I looked at my family, who had just had the time of their lives at the beach. Then the rest of the passengers sitting peacefully in their seats, I thought, “maybe spring break means a little bit more.”
It was just then, I realized the Grinch was finally happy, flying 600 miles an hour away from any form of “fun” . . . and most of all . . . in total “peace and quiet.”