I almost died when I was five. Here’s what happened. I had a case of pneumonia. That’s where your lungs become infected somehow and start filling up with fluid so that you can barely breathe.

I didn’t know it at the time but mine was a very serious case. In fact, Moop took me to the hospital because she was so worried about me. I found out later that after the doctor examined me, he told Moop that I probably wasn’t going to survive. He thought I only had a few hours left to live. They planned some kind of emergency operation to clean out my lungs, and I remember being wheeled down a big long hallway on a gurney, headed for the operating room.

On the way there I saw the Geezer, who was carrying a big bag of jellybeans. And I asked him who those were for. He said maybe I could have some when I was all done with the operation. And then I couldn’t wait for the operation to be over because I could just picture eating a handful of them, one by one, in a leisurely kind of way, in front of the TV watching Gilligan’s Island.

Then the next thing I knew I was in the operating room, and a lady was covering my face with this big horrid thing that looked like a gas mask. She said to breathe as deeply as I could and count backward from ten. The air coming out of that mask tasted kind of like burned sugar mixed with turpentine and I didn’t like it. I got to eight and I didn’t remember anything after that—until the next morning.

I woke up in a hospital room and the first thing I saw was the Geezer with that big bag of jellybeans. The Geezer must have seen how I was looking longingly at the bag. He said OK, I could have them now.