THE COMA QUESTIONS

Falling into a coma is a lot like extreme sports. You close your eyes for, like, a second, suddenly you wake up in a strange place, an unspecified amount of time has passed and you've no idea how you ended up there. If they could somehow fit snow in there they could take comas to the Winter Olympics.

I guess the strange part of waking up from a coma is you never know quite how long you've been asleep. It seemed like just another night's sleep to you but everyone around you is acting like it's this big deal. You're like, "What? I just woke up. What is with everyone?" When you fell asleep you were normal, when you wake up you're the same person but everyone else is from the Twilight Zone.

Whenever anybody wakes up from a coma on TV they always ask the same questions. "What year is this?" "Who's the President?" "Who won the World Series?" Sometimes the doctors come in and they ask the same questions to the patient, which is odd. If a doctor leans over your bed and asks you what year it is you can pretty much see why he couldn't wake you from the coma in the first place. He's been awake these past six years and he's asking you what year it is? He probably didn't graduate at the top of the class.

It must be disappointing to learn you were only in a coma for a week. You'd be lying in the hospital bed asking the coma questions and your heart would sink, wouldn't it?

"What year is this?" "2005."

"Who's the Prime Minister?" "Same guy."

"What did I miss?" "Nuthin'."

You'd still be "the coma guy" though, you know? People would come up to you and ask how much things had changed since you were last awake. You'd lean against the bar, looking bewildered as the landlord points out that you've not handed over enough money. "Five pounds and two pence is it? Man, the last time I was in here it was £4.98. I can’t seem to connect with your modern world - it's all so alien to me. Maybe I was in that coma just too long... "