I wanted to tell you this story
because it's a true story.
It happene—I was
in Seattle, Washington
and I was taking the red eye flight.
Okay, you know the red eye flight,
you get on the plane at 12:30 at night
and you fly overnight.
Now, you think you're gonna sleep.
You go, "Wow, I'm gonna
"sleep on this plane."
But I have a problem.
I don't know if you've
been on a plane lately.
If you have,
you know that airline seats
are FAA regulated
to be 16 inches wide.
That's what the requirement is now,
16 inches for a seat.
Look at me, people.
I'm 44 in the waist.
Even if you divide for front and back,
44 don't go into 16.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
I can't put both cheeks down, okay?
You know, I'm going to say, no,
I'm not going to be able to sleep.
And so I was exhausted.
I finally got home to my
home port, Tampa, Florida.
Got in my car, drove
to Lakeland, Florida
where my wife and I have a little house.
I was absolutely exhausted.
So what did I do?
I went right to bed.
Went to bed, fell asleep.
8:30 in the morning.
Slept all the way 'til 12:30 at night.
Now, you have to understand.
I need to tell you this.
I take a lot of medications, okay.
I take 15 pills because
of my heart condition.
I take 15 pills every day.
Now, if my wife were here,
she would be in the back,
she would put her hands up,
she would say, "you tell them
"the truth."
Okay, here's the truth,
I do take 15 pills everyday.
Three of them were given
to me by doctors.
(audience laughing)
12 were given to me by people
like you around the country
who said, "if you'll take this,
"you'll get better."
Okay, that's, that's the deal.
I have a friend, Gordon Douglas.
He gets these,
he gets shark cartilage tablets.
Have you heard of shark cartilage?
He buys them from a Canadian
veterinary supply house, okay.
Yeah, you think
Canadian meds are cheap?
Try Canadian veterinarian meds.
They're much better, okay?
Shark cartilage.
And he sends them to me.
"Is the shark cartilage
"helping your heart?"
I don't know.
I am swimming faster than
I've ever swam before,
and, and, and when I eat,
my eyes roll back in my head,
but unless you get
the Discovery Channel,
you wouldn't get that.
And so, so I, I take that.
I have two ladies from
the essential oil companies,
the two major essential oil—
I know you're in the room.
I smell thieves oil, okay.
I know you're here.
Okay.
Great ladies who make me pills.
They actually, get this.
You—if you're in this, you know this.
They buy empty pill capsules.
They put droplets of ancient,
biblical oils in there. They send
them to me through the mail,
which I believe is a
federal offense, okay.
(audience laughing)
And I take them, I don't question it.
I can't pronounce
any of the names of the oils.
In fact, the only oil name that I know
is I know that both of them
put three drops
of frankincense oil.
Have you heard of frankincense?
Okay.
I have too.
My, my background in school,
I majored in Greek and
philosophy and religion.
So, I know a little bit
about frankincense.
From the Christmas story,
we know gold,
frankincense, and myrrh.
Frankincense is an oil
to prepare you for your burial,
(audience laughing)
which kind of bothers me
that they're putting that
in my "get better" oil.
I asked my wife, I said,
why do you think they're
putting frankincense in my oil?
She said, "They're hedging their bets."
I said, what do you mean by that?
She said, "Think about it.
"It's kind of like the person
"who goes to the veterinarian
"who's also the taxidermist.
"That way, either way you get
"your dog back, you know?"
And so, that's the concept.
So anyway,
the story is that I had flown
this red-eye flight. I fell asleep.
I didn't wake up until 12:30 at night.
I missed my nine o'clock
in the morning pills.
I missed my nine o'clock
at night pills.
And it freaked me out because
I know that my heart is gonna
be off the chain real quick.
I quietly got up out of bed.
I didn't want to wake up my wife.
I love my wife.
That's the kind of husband I am.
I got up quietly.
Went into the kitchen.
Didn't even turn on the light
because the light could shine
into the bedroom and wake her up.
I didn't want to wake her up.
That's the kind of husband that I am.
That's the way I roll.
That's how I do it, okay.
And so I quietly . . . I opened
the refrigerator door
just to have enough refrigerator light
to begin to take my 15 pills.
Now I'm telling you right now,
you can't take 15 pills at once.
I've tried.
I take mine in, like,
three groups of seven.
And so,
(audience laughing)
not a big math crowd right here.
Woo, go homeschool.
And so,
(audience laughing)
I start taking my pills,
and the taking of my pills
in the semi-darkness,
I look down.
Apparently, I have dropped
two pills on the floor. Now, we have
young kids at our house.
We believe if something
falls on the floor,
you have a short amount of time,
a window of time in which
to pick them up
and they are still considered clean.
Are you with me? At our house,
that's 45 minutes, okay.
And so,
(audience laughing)
I reach down. I pick up the pills,
dust them off, pop them
in my mouth, swallow them down,
went back, slid into bed
as quietly as I could,
because that's the kind
of husband I am.
And I'm laying there trying
to get back to sleep,
but I'm so tired and
my body clock is off.
Have you ever been so tired
you can't sleep?
What is the deal with that?
Where's a medical person?
Does any doct—is there a doctor,
or a nurse in here, anybody?
Nobody will claim it tonight, will you?
Yeah. Right.
I don't understand is how can you
be too tired to sleep?
It makes no sense. I've never been
so hungry I couldn't eat.
Right?
I've never been,
I have got to pee so bad, I can't pee.
You know what I'm saying?
(audience laughing)
I said that last night in St. Louis,
an old guy shouts out, "Well, you've
"never had a kidney stone."
And so,
that's what he said, okay.
(audience laughing)
And I'm just, I'm exhausted,
so I'm laying there
trying to go to sleep.
Now, I've heard about
people who count sheep.
Okay?
You know, they count sheep.
I don't know how to count sheep,
never raised sheep.
Again, a little bit of
that religion background,
and just so, I like to go
through the books of the Bible.
I like to just count 'em,
you know what I mean?
Count the books of the Bible.
One: Genesis. Two: Exodus.
Three: Leviticus. Four: Numbers.
You know, do all 35, 40 of them
and go through that . . .
(audience laughing)
Not a big theological crowd either,
put that down.
Okay.
And go through that.
And as I'm going through
the books of the Bible there,
I went quickly. I started
to get indigestion.
I went quickly from indigestion
to an upset stomach,
quickly from an upset stomach to pain.
Now, when I reached pain,
I realized
that I should not suffer alone.
Can I get a witness, men?
Can I get a witness? Okay.
(audience laughing)
And I turned to my wife,
the love of my life.
We have been married
33 years consecutively! Okay?
And I turned to her
and I shook her arm and I said,
"Baby, wake up,
"I'm not feeling well, at all."
To which my wife, the love of my life,
my childhood sweetheart,
opens one eye and says,
"Roll over and go to sleep.
"You'll feel fine in the morning."
Let me say, that was not
the level of care I expect
after 33 faithful years.
And I started to get mad.
I started to get angry.
And I said, nope. Not going to do it.
What would Jesus do?
I thought, he would send her
to hell right now
is what he would do.
(spit)
She'd be gone.
You know what I mean?
No, no, no, no.
I said, I said, Jesus would
give her a second chance.
Can I get a "yeah"?
You know what I'm saying?
Okay. And so,
so I thought
about this and I said,
I have got to put this in a way,
I've got to wake her up
in a way that she can
buy into having empathy for me.
Now, some of you were saying,
Mike, you sound like
a counselor background.
No, no counseling background at all.
But my wife was,
my wife has her bachelor's degree
in counseling
and her master's degree
in orchestral conducting.
My wife is a female
orchestra conductor.
I know it's impressive,
but talk about unemployable.
There it is, okay.
(audience laughing)
But I'm not bitter.
It was $120,000,
that one day we'll be glad
we were paying for.
And so, anyway,
(audience laughing)
she used to wake me up
at all hours in the night
when she was pregnant.
My wife was infatuated
with our child's kicking
and she would wake me up
in the middle of the night
and say, "Baby, feel this."
She would grab my hand and
she would put it on her stomach
and she'd go, "Wait,"
and I would wait.
And she'd go, "Okay, wait,"
and about 20 minutes later, she'd go,
"there, there did you feel that?"
And I would always go,
oh wow, that was amazing.
But I'm going to be honest with you,
I'm probably going to get
kicked out of the men's club
for saying this, I never felt nothing.
Nothing, nothing, notta, zip, zilch,
but I always pretended I did.
Why? Because I loved her and
I loved the child, okay.
I think it ought to be reciprocal.
I reached over. I shook her arm.
I said, baby, wake up. Feel my
stomach. Something is kicking.
To whic—
(audience laughing)
To which she opens up one eye
and says, "Quit whining."
(gasping)
(audience laughing)
Out of the mouth of a
Christian woman.
Now I'm mad, now I'm laying
right over on my side of the bed.
Right there against the—
I'm just talking to myself,
I'm not whining.
I know when I'm whining.
Oh I can—I'm a man,
I know how to whine.
We were trained in it
when we were young.
I know, I know how to—
I'm not just gonna
get better in the morning.
I know when I'm gonna get better
in the morning.
I'm not going to get better.
In fact, I hope I die.
I hope I die to prove
to you and your mother.
(audience laughing)
Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.
I got up. I got dressed. I got in my car.
Drove down to the emergency room.
They took me right in and
started scanning my body
with an ultrasound machine.
You know those machines
that look inside you.
They're asking me questions,
"Mr. Williams, have you
"had an operation recently?"
I said, no. Last operation
I had was 27 years ago.
Why do you ask? And he turned
the screen toward me and he
moved the probe right in here.
He said, "Mr. Williams,
"if you'd had an operation,
"we'd almost believe that
"somehow they had inadvertently,
"accidentally, of course,
"left two sponges in you.
"There are two sponges of
"medical size, six inch medical—"
Don't get ahead of me,
you already know more than
I knew at the time.
"Two six inch medical sponges
"in your intestinal track."
The young doctor leans over
and he says,
"One of the sponges
"looks like a dinosaur."
Okay.
(audience laughing)
Don't get ahead of me.
Don't get ahead of me!
(audience laughing)
They do a little more scanning,
then they left the room.
They went out to that,
you know how they have it
in the emergency room,
they have that island
of computers out there
where they go out and
look up on Google to see
what they think you might have . . .
(audience laughing)
Of course, I'm on Obamacare,
so I get a free
second opinion from Bing.
And so anyway,
(audience laughing)
When they went out there,
I got out my phone,
I called my wife,
I woke her up for a third time.
I said, I'm not just whining.
I'm not just going to get better
in the morning.
I have two sponges in me.
Six inch sponges
in my intestinal track.
And one of the sponges
looks like a dinosaur.
To which my wife,
the love of my life, 33 years,
says to me,
"We went to the Dollar Store today."
Have you ever had somebody
join your conversation that had
no idea what you were talking about?
I said, baby, wake up.
I'm at the emergency room.
The ER, "err." I am here, I am here.
Three doctors are in the room.
I have a T-Rex in my intestines.
I could care less
where you went shopping today.
She said, "I'm not asleep, silly.
"We went to the doctor today
"and your middle son, Coleman,
"with his dollar bought
"four little green pills.
"When you throw them in water,
"six minutes later,
"they expand to
"six inch foam dinosaurs.
(audience laughing)
"He lost two of the pills."
(audience laughing)
I said, I will call you back.
(audience laughing)