As a ninth grader in to have my appendix out, the male nurse who came in to take me to surgery walked in fast, grabbed my chart, and looking at it said, “You’re the vasectomy. Right?”

I’ve got a scar in the right place, and my children are grown now, so it was probably just a joke.

But maybe what happened after surgery was funnier.

My roommate Greg was two years younger, but seemed a decade wiser. Greg had cystic fibrosis, and was in for a collapsed lung. Again. He’d been in several times before. He was a character. The things he suggested to the nurses would have gotten him thrown out of most bars. However they seemed very tolerant and tried to hide their amusement.

My stitches had to be redone less than twenty four hours after my surgery. I’d torn them laughing. Sorry. I have no memory of what he’s said, but we were at that giggle fit point where any noise would have us laughing. I do remember my mom leaving the room in tears from laughing more than once.

A few days after my surgery, I was supposed to walk slowly a few times a day up and down the hallway. Usually my mom did this with me, but one day Greg volunteered to help me. I don’t know what the hell the nurses were thinking. Up and down the hallway we slowly went. I steadied myself on his shoulder, and he pushed my IV stand. Every time we passed the nurses station, he’d stop and flirt with them with a style that I never in my adult life achieved.

Greg convinced me to stand on the crosspiece base of the IV stand, and hold on to it. He got me up to running speed, and let me go just before the nurses station. The terrified AAAAAAAAAH I made going by was genuine. The three nurses flew down the hallway after me and quite frankly it’s a miracle they caught me before I wiped out.

They quickly figured out what happened because Greg came flying out of the nurses station, and ran for our room. He’d untied his gown in back, and was holding the corners straight out front improvising a loot bag for the dozen or so bars of icecream he’d swiped from the fridge in the nurses station. This was apparently not his first big icecream heist, nor the first time his little white butt had been displayed in public.

The nurses got me back into bed, and then proceeded to search the room with an efficiency honed by experience. The bathroom. The armoire. Under his blanket. Behind his pillow. Behind MY pillow. The anger they tried to show was clearly forced. I think they all loved him. I have no doubt that when they left the room they knew they hadn’t found all of them.

Shortly after they left he gave me a big grin, reached under his blanket into the nether regions, pulled out two icecreams, and tossed me my spoils.

Greg died several months later. Some stars shine long. Some stars shine bright.