Last week, there was a video being sent around the internet of a guy who woke up from surgery, surprised and super pleased to find that the beautiful woman standing beside him was his wife.  I saw a lot of people questioning whether or not it was real, many of them sure that a man could never be that loopy, even post-surgery.  As I’ve had occasion to sit with a drugged-up Emma this weekend (hooray for Benadryl), I’ve been reminded of the time that I witnessed a man far loopier than the amnesia guy.  And even sweeter.

I present to you Wes Faulk, post-wisdom teeth surgery.  (That picture above was taken about a week after the extraction. The pictures immediately following the surgery are great… but embarrassing.  So, I’ll refrain.)

When Wes and I met, he had just finished college and was, thanks to his age, still on his parents’ insurance policy.  I had already been on the SBC insurance, under the foreign mission board’s umbrella, for two years and had just recently switched to the seminarian plan… which stunk, y’all.  It was a particularly awful coverage, but it was cheap.  The plan was to get Wes on the same policy once we were married so the goal, while we were engaged, was to get him up to date on every procedure, appointment, checkup, and immunization that he could get while still under the awesome insurance.

So, he probably didn’t really even need to get his wisdom teeth out at that point.  But we were getting them out!

We spent the majority of the summer in Lebanon on an evangelism team and didn’t leave ourselves much room between our return to the States and the new semester starting.  But there was enough time to get him down to San Antonio where a friend of the family was going to do the surgery for an even cheaper deal, so we got him all settled up, patted him on the back, and sent him in for the long procedure.

I had gotten my own wisdom teeth out when I was eighteen and remember waking up, paranoid and suspicious, certain that I’d only spent ten minutes in surgery and that I had, in fact, been awake the entire time.  (Which I hadn’t.  It was much longer than ten minutes, and I was out cold.)  Hours after Wes’s surgery, as I went around to peek in on him and see how he was doing, I wondered if he would react likewise.  It was hard to imagine that he would be anything but sweet and snuggly, since that’s pretty much how he looked curled up in the chair, still asleep, his mouth full of gauze.

Sweet and snuggly, yes.  Maybe TOO sweet and snuggly.

He came to a little while later and came out of surgery, laughing.  Oh, yeah.  He was feeling pretty good.  He felt even better when I came over to help him walk out to the car, as he put his arm around me with a goofy smile and came right at me for a kiss.  And it just wasn’t happening with all that gauze, which made it impressive that he was able to make his intentions clear without making a huge mess of things.  I didn’t feel a bit bad about ducking away from this train wreck waiting to happen, telling him, “Thank you, Wes.  Why don’t you get in the car?”

Then, the hilarity of the situation really hit him as he pulled down the visor mirror and saw what he looked like.  On and on he laughed as his dad drove him home.  On and on he laughed even as he reached his hand back into the backseat to try and grab my legs. 

Inhibitions?  Completely gone. 

Perhaps if we hadn’t been at his parents’ house it would have been a little less mortifying.  But as it was, he kept gazing at me, trying to kiss me, and all but burying his head in my neck and laughing around his muffled insistence that, “I love you so much” as I helped drag him into the house.  This version of Wes was a lot of fun… and a little goofy.

I had been pretty certain that I wouldn’t be able to change out his gauze on my own, since the very thought made me feel sick, but it was a lot easier than I had figured, especially when he put his arms around me and stared up at me, all moon-eyed.  Flattering and still funny, when he kept laughing and trying to go in for a  kiss.  And after I moved to the other couch so as to stop him from trying any more of that (or worse), he smiled over at me, cheeks full, and motioned to himself, drew a big heart in the air with his hands, and pointed to me and winked. 

I love you, too.

If I had known at the time that such loopy, lovesick actions could go viral (or if I had known what “go viral” would one day mean), I would have caught it all on video.

Maybe next time.