In my final year at university, reality hit me in the form of a searing, localized agony at two in the morning. I managed to get into my car to drive to my parents' house, but the journey was a stop-start nightmare; at every red light, I had to abandon the steering wheel and curl myself into a fetal ball until the light turned green.
My parents took one look at my translucent complexion and rushed me to the emergency room. I was whisked into surgery for an emergency appendectomy.
My first memory of waking up was the surgeon standing over my bed, looking less like a clinical professional and more like a proud fisherman.
"My God, Mr. Myburgh!" he exclaimed. "You have the hugest appendix I have ever seen! It’s truly impressive—look, here it is in a bottle." He held up the jar with a flourish. "Getting this sucker out of you was a genuine challenge. Do you mind if we keep it? It honestly belongs in a museum."
Droggy and recovering, I looked at the "sucker" in the jar and felt a strange, misplaced sense of pride. I remember thinking, Wow, I only wish certain other of my organs were built to the same magnificent proportions.
With my parents heading off on a trip, I went to stay with my beloved grandparents to convalesce. It was during this recovery period that I discovered a side of my grandfather I had never suspected.
One morning, unable to sleep, I crept into the kitchen at dawn for a glass of milk. There sat Gramps at the kitchen table, intensely focused on the morning crossword. He was entirely, unapologetically nude.
"Gramps," I whispered, clutching my surgical stitches, "you’re... you're nude."
He didn't even look up from the clues. "Yes," he replied matter-of-factly. "For some reason, it makes me more inspired at thinking up words."
I considered this in silence.
Between his approach to crosswords and my record-breaking appendix, it was becoming increasingly clear that subtlety was not a dominant trait in our family.
0 comments:
Post a Comment