Submitted by: Tracy
Word limit: 753
Topic: Things people say when under the effects of anesthesia
Upon reflection, I haven’t spent too much time around people just recovering from surgery. I took care of my boyfriend when he had his wisdom teeth removed, but all he did was dribble blood down his chin and look wan.
As for myself, I’ve been under general anesthesia twice. The first time was my own wisdom tooth extraction when I was seventeen (it was a very good year, otherwise). The oral surgeon put an IV in my arm and pushed the medicine. I asked, “How long does this stuff take to work?” I’m pretty sure that I got all the words out before the inside of my mouth turned to wet plaster. The surgeon said, “Oh, pretty quickly,” and my last conscious thought was of the obvious smirk he threw to his assistant as he said it. The bastard smirked at me, a poor kid going all woozy and slumping over in front of him! Then, after briefly listening to a drill going nuts in the back of my mouth, I regained consciousness face down — maybe it was face sideways; anyway, my face had something to do with it — in a recovery room. Although I don’t remember the details of the room very well, the sense of a confessional booth stays with me. I don’t remember what I said; my mouth was tender, so I might not have said anything at all.
The second time was almost exactly a year ago, when I had a minor laparoscopic surgery. I remember being apprehensive about the stupid stuff I would say under general, and then becoming preoccupied with saying the absolute funniest thing possible to my doctor just before I went all the way under. This was spurred by an anecdote from my grandfather, himself no stranger to surgery: my grandmother would pin comic strips to his hospital gown so the last thing he heard was the laughter of the surgical staff. That story got into my head. I coveted that laugh.
Maybe I should have been a little more somber while being wheeled into an operating room. Yet the goal only materialized before me after I had been given something they described to me (though not in so many words) as a pre-party dose, so it was in between brain echoes of WOOOOOOO and ceiling tiles! when I decided I must be my absolute funniest. I do recall, in this long trip down the short hallway, debating whether dropping the f-bomb would be too shocking.
DOCTOR: Good morning. Are you ready to go?
ME: Just don’t fuck up. (Doctor and staff dissolve into fits of raucous laughter.)
DOCTOR: Okay, everyone, obviously this patient is extra special. Let’s really try our hardest here.
What I wasn’t about to do was say something that I hadn’t chosen and vetted in my head in advance. Nothing drives me crazy like when I say something innocuous that, once spoken, turns out to be funny. My unintentional humor is always better received, and it makes my brain want to assassinate itself. Hello! Why am I even trying in here? I don’t even enjoy the unexpected laugh, because my brain gets mad and wants everyone to shut up and save their laughter for its own best efforts. This dichotomy has led to lifelong self censure: if I’m going to say something funny, it had damn well be of my own invention. I’m probably less funny in the long run, but the parts of my brain don’t get envious this way. Yes, it’s true: my wacky and free-wheeling antics are all thorougly scripted and staged. To wit: my singular focus, while high on medical drugs, on saying something perfectly engineered to be funny. When the time came, however, I couldn’t even muster a weak “Rock ‘n’ roll!” I believe I said, “What’s up.”
If I said anything exceptionally funny, or even remotely so, in the aftermath of these two procedures — both of which were pretty brief and didn’t require a whopper of a knockout — I never heard of it. My mom would know; she drove me home from both of them. Then again, she knows how I feel about being unintentionally funny, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s withholding the truth from me. Maybe it’s a vast conspiracy, like everyone I know has secretly seen the YouTube video of me, with gauze falling out of my mouth, trying to sing the words of the Gettysburg Address to the tune of “Freebird.”
Probably not. I don’t even know the Gettysburg Address.