I’ll see your bedpan and raise you two more.

The room is in semi-darkness. There is a consistently timed tonal beeping that feels somewhat reassuring. On my left, I see a curtain hanging from a rod that curves around the foot of the bed. I hear faint footfalls of soft-bottomed shoes padding back and forth close to where I lie prone. “Why am I lying in this bed? Where am I?”

A hand pulls back the curtain, revealing an angel in white… hair the color of spun gold. With a smile that gleams like a beacon in the night, she asks, “How are you doing? Are you feeling any pain?”

Now I remember… I’m in the hospital. I’ve just had a hip replacement. As my memory slowly returns, she fluffs the pillow under my head, points to a button, and says, “When you start to feel pain, just hit this magic button, and the pain will disappear like a rabbit in a magician’s hat.”

The fact that she says when you start to feel pain, not if, isn’t terribly reassuring. I think of explaining to her that a rabbit doesn’t disappear into a magician’s hat but appears from it, but decide against doing so, not wanting to betray my image of her as a well-informed, knowledgeable, consummate professional fulfiller of my needs.

She points to a TV bolted to the ceiling, lays a remote on the bed beside me, closes the curtain, and leaves as quietly as she arrived. I jab the magic button, and in minutes I’m floating in a wonderful, warm cushion of drug-induced comfort and bliss. Little do I realize how short it will last.

I woke up to the scraping of the curtain being pulled back. Expecting my lovely caretaker to appear, I was somewhat shaken to see an older man’s face a few inches from mine, peeking through the opening in the curtain. He opened his mouth to reveal a gap-toothed smile, and in an almost perfect impersonation of Cary Grant, said:

“Judy, Judy, Judy. I’ve always loved women named Judy, but I’m thrilled to share this semi-private room with you… whoever you are.” Then he abruptly pulled the curtain closed. I thought I must be dreaming, until fifteen minutes later, when he stuck his head through the curtain once again, and this time, sounding uncannily like John Wayne, said:

“We’ll, I don’t care whatya say; there’s no one else I’d rather share this semi-private room with than you… whoever you are.” Then he ducked behind the curtain as he’d done before.

I laid there trying to decide whether to push the nurse’s button, yell for security, or grab my bedpan and clock him over the head the next time he made an appearance through the curtain. After a moment of quiet contemplation, I chose the latter.

While I waited, bedpan in hand, the drugs took hold again, and as I drifted off into slumber land, the bedpan slipped through my fingers and hit the floor with a loud CLANG! Startled by the sound, I awoke to see my old friend, once more, beaming at me. Then he winked and, sounding just like John F. Kennedy, uttered the words:

“Ask not what your hospital can do for you, but what you can do for your hospital… whoever you are.” Whether it was exhaustion from the surgery, the painkillers, or the uncontrollable desire to escape whatever the hell was happening to me, I fell into a deep welcoming sleep and began to dream.

***

I was sharing a hospital room with Cary Grant, John Wayne, and John F. Kennedy. We were sitting on my bed, playing poker, and using our bedpans as betting chips.

Cary Grant drew two cards, smiled shrewdly, and threw his bedpan into the pot. Wayne and Kennedy both said, “I call” in unison, and threw their bedpans into the pot.

I was holding two 5’s, two 9’s, and a Queen, and contemplating whether to call or raise, I closed my cards and opened them again slowly (a habit I have when playing poker). Upon opening them, I got the surprise of my life –– the pair of 5’s and 9’s were gone, and I was now holding four Kings –– but what I found even more surprising was the fact that all four Kings looked exactly like me.

My feeling of astonishment lasted only a moment before it was overcome by an uncontrollable desire to win the hand, so I peeked at the cards once again to make sure they hadn’t changed and said:

“I’ll see your bedpan and raise you two more.”

The others each said, “I call” in rapid succession, and when they showed their cards, my mind had a hard time computing what my eyes beheld –– not only did each of them have four Kings also, but the Kings they were holding looked exactly like them.

I shudder to think what I looked like at that moment, because it felt as if my eyes bulged from their sockets and smoke came steaming from my ears, as you see in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and when I was sure things couldn’t get any weirder, the curtain opened and Porky Pig stood there with his arms full of bedpans and stuttered:

“Deeyadee, Deeyadee, Deeyadee, Deeya dat’s all folks!”

***

 I woke up the next morning thinking, “I really have to stop watching Turner Classic Movies on TV.” An hour later, when my nurse, the lovely angel in white, came to take me for physical therapy, I noticed there was no one in the bed next to me. “Am I sharing a room with anyone else?” I asked.

“Yes, you are. He’s going through a series of tests at the moment. He’s a sweet old gentleman who has started showing signs of early memory loss.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It must be difficult for him.”

“I’m sure it is,” she responded. “But he has a wonderful way of dealing with it. Whenever he forgets who he is, he just takes on the persona of a celebrity he respects and admires, and when he does, it’s uncanny how much he actually sounds like them. If you weren’t looking at him, you would think you were talking to the person he’s become at that moment.”

Later that day, I lay in my bed waiting anxiously for my roommate to appear through the curtain, as he had the night before, having dismissed any thought of using my bedpan if and when he did. As the hours passed, my anticipation grew exponentially as I wondered who he might become, and how much fun it would be to have a conversation with some famous, interesting, entertaining celebrity.

After quite some time passed and I thought he wasn’t going to appear, I heard the scrape of the curtain and turned to see him looking at me with the same gap-toothed smile. Not quite sure how to address him but eagerly waiting to see who he chose to be, I said: “Hi, my name is Joe,” What’s yours?”

He hesitated for a moment with a puzzled look on his face and answered:

“Seymour, my name is Seymour Uvmee. Glad to meet you, Joe. What are you in for?”

“I just had a hip replacement. Got myself a brand-new hip. How about you?”

“Oh, they’re giving me a series of tests. They think I’m having problems with my memory… but that couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s nothing wrong with my memory at all.”

Noticing my look of disbelief, he rolled his eyes, began to laugh, and then proceeded to tell me an amazing story that was absolutely, positively, too good not to be true:

“You see, Joe, I’ve been invisible my whole life. No one ever paid any attention to me, noticed me, or even cared that I was around. When I played ball as a kid, I was never picked on any teams. When I became a teenager, girls looked right through me as if I weren’t even there. As I got older, things got even worse.

“Then one day sitting in Starbucks with everyone completely oblivious to my presence, my frustration reached its peak, and I stood up, raised my voice, and did an impersonation of W. C. Fields repeating one of his famous quotes, `It ain’t what they call you, it’s who you answer to.’

“To my surprise everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up at me, and that was when I realized that I could get people to notice me by being someone other than myself. So here I am. I thought it would be fun to spend a few days in the hospital getting the undivided attention of doctors, nurses, and orderlies twenty-four seven. My tests are over with, they’ve found nothing, as I knew they wouldn’t, and I’ll be leaving in the morning, but during these past few days here, I’ve felt really special. Hell, I’ve been having the time of my life.”

We spent hours talking, learning about each other, sharing stories and bonding in a way I’d never had the privilege of experiencing previously. By the end of the evening, I had seen more of Mr. Seymour Uvmee than anyone had before, and I could say without reservation that he was one of the most interesting people I’d ever met.

The next morning, when he was dressed and ready to leave, I shook his hand and said, “It was great to meet you, Seymour… I really enjoyed sharing this room with you… whoever you are.” He looked at me quizzically and said, “Seymour, who’s Seymour?”

Then as they wheeled him out of the room, he winked, and in a voice that sounded uncannily like Humphrey Bogart in the last scene from Casablanca, he said:

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

To purchase books of humor by Joe Favale visit his website at: http://laughwithjoe.com