Dear Dr. Rupert D. Cantwell, MD, PhD, FACS, Chair of the Department of Surgery,
When I relocated to THE DEEP SOUTH to begin my general surgery residency program at the Duke University School of Medicine, I never dreamed I would be confronted by such brazen persecution at the hands of whom I had been assured were a tolerant community.
The McMuffins and Starbucks coffee laid out for our orientation breakfast were immediate red flags. When I announced we don’t have chains on Martha’s Vineyard, where I was born and raised, a resident laughed in my face and said, “People live there? I thought it was just a tourist town.”
I corrected her inconsiderate assumption by listing exhaustive facts about the Vineyard’s 15,000 permanent residents. I had only begun detailing the distinctive personalities of the up-island beaches like Edgartown, Chilmark, and West Tisbury when you rudely interrupted me and motioned to wrap it up because we had a full itinerary ahead of us.
After we took our seats for the faculty introductions, the Chief of Surgical Oncology droned on about how taking his terminally ill mother to see the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse for the first time reignited his passion for elder care. Why would anyone slog all the way out to some place called the Outer Banks when on the Vineyard I can see FIVE LIGHTHOUSES? Everyone was noticeably nonplussed by this fact no matter how loudly I repeated it.
North Carolina may be first in flight, but the Vineyard has the Flying Horses Carousel, THE OLDEST OPERATING CAROUSEL IN THE UNITED STATES! Take that, Chief of Pediatric General Surgery and your feeble list of other NC firsts, like “the nation’s first brain tumor program.”
The “speed dating” icebreaker game was another low point in the morning’s activities. One resident I met had just learned the house from that Netflix documentary The Staircase was near downtown Durham, but I countered with the 300-plus Wesleyan Grove gingerbread cottages in Oak Bluffs. The Petersen murder house vs. HISTORIC GINGERBREAD COTTAGES? Please.
Another hopeless resident creamed himself over having seen a Duke basketball player at Target but wasn’t impressed to hear that on the Vineyard you might run into Tommy Hilfiger, Harry Connick Jr., Dan Aykroyd, or even MEG RYAN. You’re more likely to see her on the Vineyard than in movies these days.
During the break for lab coat fitting and individual photos, the photographer complained about all the new condos going up around Durham. I mentioned we don’t have condos on the Vineyard. When the Director of Emergency Medicine said she had just bought one of those condos, I reminded her we don’t have condos on the Vineyard. When the lab coat wrangler bemoaned his sloppy wardrobe organization and joked about hiring Marie Kondo, I steered the conversation back to how WE DON’T HAVE CONDOS ON THE VINEYARD. They all acted like I was invisible.
And finally, when I commandeered the microphone during your spiel on regulatory compliance to proclaim that more U.S. presidents have vacationed on the Vineyard than are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, you rudely interrupted me again and said, “If everything’s so much better on the Vineyard, perhaps you should return there to devise an advanced surgical procedure for penile insertion into one’s own anus.” Everyone laughed as I stormed out of orientation and denounced this toxic residency.
Sir, if I must be compelled to select a locality for engaging in violent self-pleasure, I will choose Martha’s Vineyard every time, the cradle of civilized civilization, the greatest one hundred square miles on God’s green Earth. If you ever decide to visit, my only advice to you is this: You’re gonna need a bigger boat (Jaws was filmed on the Vineyard. JAWS).
