Below you’ll see my “anecdote.”  Notice that it’s kind of boring.  It doesn’t have many vivid verbs, and it doesn’t have any sensory details, really.  Especially, it doesn’t have any dialog!  Think of ways you could improve it - invent some sensory details that I could add.  Yes, we can invent things that we don’t remember - we need to in order to make it more interesting.

       I went down the elevator with my girlfriend to the O.R.  A doctor met me there, joked around with me, and brought me to the room.  I saw a bunch of doctors there who told me I would be okay, but I would feel groggy afterwards.  They strapped me onto the table.  My girlfriend said she would wait for me and wait for my family to show up.  The lights were bright, and I was scared.  I got put under.  When I woke up, my girlfriend was right there.  I thought I had just closed my eyes for a moment.  The doctor said the operation was fine, but it took longer than he thought.  He asked me if I hurt.  I thought I was fine for a second, then realized my whole body really, really hurt.  He turned up the morphine so I wouldn’t hurt as much.  Even though my girlfriend and I were thinking of breaking up the week before, I was really glad she was there because I really didn’t want to go through that alone.

Pretty boring, huh?  Now, see what happened when I made an effort to invent some sensory details, and added some active, vivid verbs to spice it up and make it more “real.”

        “Jim is another nurse – he’ll meet you downstairs and bring you to the O.R.,” the night nurse, Nancy, smiled at me in a well-practiced, smooth tone.  The elevator doors hushed shut with my hospital bed hogging most of the room, only leaving a little space for Laura, my girlfriend, in the corner.  It was nice to smell her new perfume that she got for her birthday.  The elevator seemed pretty old; it chugged and shuddered a little as it descended the two levels. As Jim wheeled me out of the elevator, he cracked a joke about how happy my kids must be to not have to put up with their teacher for two days.  He then told Laura that she could wait in the waiting room down the hall until they woke me up from the operation.  Jim must have seen the look of panic on my face –

                “Don’t worry man, she’ll be the first face you see when you wake up!”  Laura smiled…at least her mouth did – her eyes squinted a little, showing worry.

                “Oh, you don’t have to stick around, hon,” I lied.  Although we had been fighting a lot the last week and were probably going to break up, she was the only one I knew who was here.  Mom and Dad and Sarah wouldn’t be able to get to the hospital until after the surgery.

                “Don’t worry – I’ll be here – I’ll only leave to get your family if they show up in the middle of it,” Laura said.  Jim wheeled me through the hallway, which was all tile, unlike the walls of the upper floors.  It seemed about ten degrees cooler, too.  Inside the operating room, there were five people – I couldn’t tell who was a nurse, and who was a doctor.  All of them had their blue scrubs on.  The smell of antiseptic that pervaded the rest of the room was gone here – I couldn’t smell anything at all.  There was a lot of stainless steel and large lights on what looked like a robotic arm.

                “I’m doctor Jorden,” a nice, dark-haired, 40-somethingish guy said to me, “I’ll be performing your appendectomy – we’ll have you in and outta here in about two hours…you won’t even feel a thing!”

                “I hope not!” I tried to sound sarcastic.

                “No worries; when you wake up, you’ll just feel like you had one hell of a raging night partying -  just like back in college!”  I tried to laugh, but the pain in my side hurt too much.  I just grimaced.  They picked me up off my bed and balanced me onto a cold, steel table, about the width of an ironing board.  Then they put a large belt across my chest to strap me in.  I could only look up at the lights.  I wondered if this might be the last thing I see.  I wondered if my family would be here when I woke up, if I woke up.  I wondered if I would dream.

***

       I didn’t dream.  I hardly noticed that any time had passed at all.  I thought I had just blinked, when I heard Laura’s voice, “I’m right here, Dan, you’re all done.”  I opened my eyes, slowly.  I felt a little drunk and groggy.  I thought it was funny – it totally felt like I was hungover from a night of partying.  My vision was a little blurry.

      “Well done, Dan, it took a little longer than we planned, but you did great.  You’re all in one piece, minus one bum appendix,” Dr. Jordan spoke through his surgical mask, “Now, on a scale of 1-10, how badly does it hurt?”  There was a metallic, sour taste in my mouth.  I replied, “uh, three, I guess.”  As soon as I said this, I looked over to Laura – and then I cringed, my hands clutching at the side of the bed.

                “You don’t look fine – Dan, you look like you’re really in pain,” Laura said, “I think he’s hurting a lot.”  I thought it was funny that she was trying to tell the doctor how I felt, when fire erupted throughout my body in a flash.  It felt like someone had used a dull spoon to remove my entire stomach…. “Ah, ooooooh, ten, I guess, yeah…ten, ten….it ….. oooh, hurts!”

                “Yeah, tough guy, I thought so,” Jordan said, “We’ll just turn this morphine drip up a couple notches.  I looked at Laura as I squirmed on the table, the strap digging into my chest.  She looked frightened as she pet me head, and held onto my arm.  Gradually the pain eased off, like a passing wave of nausea.

                “Are my parents here?”

                “They’re right outside,” Laura answered.  I looked at her gratefully.

                “Thanks for being here, you didn’t have to stay.”

                “Are you joking?  Of course I stayed.”  Even though we weren’t really in love anymore, I was really glad to hear her say that, even more glad that she was there.  I don’t know how I’d be if I had to go through this alone.

This was a bit better, huh?  It seemed like this version, aside from being much longer, was more interesting and “real” feeling.  And yes, I totally made up much of those sensory details, especially the dialog - I hardly remember any of those.  The only sensory detail we generally remember in real life is sight anyways, and that is foggy at best.  Now, you give a shot at revising your anecdote!