I woke up from surgery almost exactly eight days ago, and at the time i couldn’t feel any part of my mouth. The state of affairs made it nearly impossible to talk much or open my mouth up too far. Furthermore, as i’ve found in the past, i am an absolutely headcase when i come out of anesthesia – i’m very sensitive to small stimuli.

There i was, Monday morning without a fairly useless body part that i had grown to utterly despise, unable to talk, and wearing a dotted dressing gown. From somewhere down the hall music wafted past, and my softened brain sucked it in like a sponge. “Here Comes The Sun” was recognized immediately, though i couldn’t even begin to approximate the process of humming along. Instead, i immediately turned to my somewhat distraught mother and exclaimed “It’s okay mom, George Harrison is here with me.”

My mother apparently took my accompaniment by a blessed Beatle to mean that i was moving towards the light, and thus became even more upset. Of course, being a mother whose sensitivity to art was washed away by the brutal reign of the television and trickle-through exposure to N’Sync singles, she had already forgotten that my secondary reason for being so upset the last time i was in the hospital for a procedure was that George had just died.

I explained it to her later: Obviously he’s become my guardian angel

Her response? Something about a flying Beatle.


Har har, mom. Har har.