. Big Yawn

About 12 years ago while I was living above my means in a small studio flat in Belsize Park and failing to make it as a writer of anything but bad children's television (and not even doing that very well) I managed to convince a few art schools around the country to employ me as a visiting animation lecturer. The first of these things was somewhere near Cardiff, or maybe Manchester, I forget. I should probably look that up. Anyway, as my short films are generally heavy on the dialogue they asked me to talk about scriptwriting. I know bugger-all about scriptwriting (my scripts are just made up as I go along) so I spent the night before reading Robert Mckee's "Story Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting" and imagining how clever I would sound if I could remember any of it.

The following morning I got on an early train to the north or the west or wherever it was, feeling simultaneously bored, tired and nervous, all of which make me yawn. And during one particularly big yawn, my jaw locked, and I could not close my mouth. For a minute I sat there like an idiot, staring out of the window, thankful that the train was mostly empty and no one seemed to have noticed. I tried putting one hand on top of my head and the other under my chin and pushing, but that didn't get me anywhere. So I pretend-yawned my way down the train and into the toilets to assess the situation privately. In the mirror I could see that my jaw was open extremely wide, and also jutted forwards. It looked ridiculous. I was drooling like an imbecile, and it was beginning to hurt. I wondered briefly what kind of painful surgery I would have to undergo if I ever wanted to close my mouth again. Twenty minutes later we pulled into the station and in a state of mild panic I yawned my way off the train and along the platform. I thought if I could just calm down that my jaw would relax and slide back into place. So I went and hid in the station toilets, which were cold and smelly and covered in handwriting about what time to show up for a good blow-job. I did not calm down and my jaw remained stuck open. I pulled a page out of my sketchbook and wrote on it "Please take me to the nearest accident and emergency hospital." I then yawned my way out of the station, got in the back of a black cab, and handed the note to the driver. He drove me to a hospital in silence, thankfully.

At the hospital I wrote on another piece of paper "I yawned and got my mouth stuck open" and handed it to the woman at reception. She smiled kindly and asked me several questions and I wrote down answers for her. Then I took a chair in the waiting room and waited. By now my jaw hurt like hell, and I had to stare at the ceiling to keep from dribbling all over myself. Some people were sneaking glances at me. After about thirty minutes I was shown into a doctors office. The first doctor who came in was about my age. She looked, laughed, and left. A few minutes later a second doctor appeared and made no mention of the first. He stood behind me, grabbed hold of my jaw, levered it down, and forwards, and somehow unhooked it. My mouth clamped shut and I thought I would never open it again. I took a cab to the college, and taught my crappy animation class. At least I had something to talk about.

Not long after this I moved to California where the sandwiches are very large, and I have to be careful.