Wiring

 My college roommates had a nickname for me: The Thing That Would Not Heave. I was awarded this epithet for my capacity for drinking alcohol and remaining upright. Which on the one hand was a measure of respect, but it was also a reminder from those who had the occasion to live with me that I was not easily wrestled from the center of attention when I began getting belligerent. Which was all too often for the tastes of those with whom I shared quarters. Bottom line: there was a lot of stumbling and mumbling, but not very much passing out. That would have been a relief for most of those who encountered the Thing That Would Not Heave. One testimonial from that time went like this, "If he'd just throw up, maybe he would fall asleep." 

Nope. Didn't happen. Well, there was that one time that I seem to have lost consciousness somewhere between my parents' kitchen and the two stairs leading out to their garage. I woke up with my head neatly wedged beneath my mother's Chrysler New Yorker, and a spray of Cheetos and beer that I had evacuated, I assume, on impact. Those around me at the time, not my parents because the drunken brawl we were having at their house was testament to their being out of town, took this opportunity to drag my somewhat lifeless corpse to the foldout bed down the hall. Where I rested only briefly before awakening just in time to slur my way through a confrontation with my older brother who had arrived to find out just how awful a job I was doing with my friends taking care of our childhood home. That did not end well. 

I mention this because it was one of the very few times that I can not recall a gap of time. Events between point A and point B were neatly erased from my hard drive and I only have others' accounts to fill in that blank. Like the hours I missed while under general anesthesia for knee surgery. The knee surgery that was a direct result of not simply passing out but instead going to a nearby park and jumping out of a swing when I would have been much better off throwing up and passing out. So trained physicians dosed me up and I went away for the time it took to reconstruct the ligaments I had destroyed, waking up just in time for the tube that had been helping me breathe was being snaked out of my throat. 

I had that kind of rude awakening last week when I went back online after my colonoscopy. I remember the nice nurse saying something about "IV push," then I remember being handed the bag with my clothes in it, and being told they were calling my wife to come and pick me up. My nearest reckoning has that missing chunk of time at a little under an hour. It could have been six hours. Or two days. I only have those who witnessed the experience to tell me who I behaved. 

I have never been a sound sleeper. I wake up for car horns or earthquakes. My wife and son are not equipped with this talent. Or burdened by it. I go to sleep, but I am never far away. I don't want to wake up in a swing, or drunkenly poking my older brother in the chest. That doesn't end well. But I suppose in this case it's just as well that I was elsewhere. It's just not something for which I am wired.