Wacky things I've done in my life. Well, we'd probably be here all day if I were to compile a list. My most manic antics (or "mantics," if you will) came during those lost years of 1950 to '53, the direct result of being held captive in Korea. When you're a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist who's thrust into the middle of a war, well, it really does a number on your conscience. Not to mention your nerves. And I can tell you from first-hand experience, you kind of act out.

Among the more preposterous pranks: I tried to drag an officers' latrine to North Korea… while a general was inside it. My partner in crime Trapper and I cut an entire wall out of Henry Blake's office in order to trade his oak desk for some vital supplies. My later partner in crime B.J. and I put Donald Penobscot in a full body cast the night before his wedding to Margaret. Oh yeah, and I also barged into the Panmunjom peace talks… very much uninvited, and even more uninhibited.

Craziness, I know.

Then of course there was the actual craziness—not hyperbole, but an honest-to-God nervous breakdown, just as the war was winding down. Yes, it's decades later, but I sometimes still think about that incident on the bus. If you don't mind, I'd rather not go into it now, though. I talked myself out with Sidney Freedman at the time, and again after I was home, with him and other doctors like him. It was a long road to recovery, and I do believe I got there, even if the horror remains with me to a certain extent.

That's OK. None of us should ever entirely forget what we went through over there, no matter how traumatic. My entire Korean War experience, including that night, informs the person that I am today.

To quote one of my dear old dad's great profundities, life is sometimes sublime and sometimes shitty. You just gotta roll with it.

I looked around Margaret's guest room as I lay there, noting that all the walls were bare. Not surprising, no personal touches in a spare room that was rarely (if ever) used, in a rented house. But actually, as I looked further, there was one photo on display, propped on a bookshelf: Margaret posing with her father, taken since Korea. The bookshelf itself held only a few books, all of them medical except for Sonnets from the Portuguese, presumably the copy that Charles had given her. That made me smile.

But the hour was getting late, and what was I doing with my eyes open? I shut them and rolled over for the hundredth time, trying to find my way to snoozeland.

You might be wondering why I was lying in a room down the hall from the former "Hot Lips" Houlihan and not thinking about making a play for her. Well it certainly wasn't because I'd suddenly become chaste or noble. As of 1956, I was still quite the incorrigible playboy. And for a couple years after that, too.

I did eventually marry, but not until I was 38 years old, to a rare flower with the much-too-common name of Susan. We met at the Crabapple Cove Lobster Festival. She was covering it for the Courier, our hometown newspaper, and she interviewed Dad and me as we sat there drinking beer and eating lobster. I'd had more beer than lobster, and my mouth was saying things without any prior approval from my brain. Dad kept trying to interrupt me, worried my drunken purple prose was going to find its way into print, embarrassing us both. But all Susan ended up writing in her article was that both Dr. Pierces had a great time. I called to thank her for her discretion and while we were chatting, I asked her out. On our first date, she corrected my grammar when I said, "If I can't trust my father, who can I trust?" ("You mean whom, Hawkeye.") It was love at first nitpick.

We were married barefoot on the beach, because she said that was how she always envisioned her wedding. For our first-dance song at the reception, she selected Jerry Lee Lewis's "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." Did I mention that she's an unusual woman?

I'll spare you the suspense: yes, we are still married. But it hasn't been a perfect marriage—not even close. I was unfaithful to her a couple of times, it pains me to admit. We were even separated once, for nearly five months. But by some miracle, my dear Susan and I are still together, and next year we'll be celebrating our 40th anniversary.

We only had one child, a daughter we named Diana. I had married so late in life that I didn't have the energy to raise more than one kid. Diana didn't have any interest in going into medicine, which—I won't lie to you—was a little disappointing. But she went to Vassar, where she averaged a 3.9 GPA, and after graduating she took a position as a high-school Lit teacher in Kennebunkport. When she was 24, she married a sweetheart of a guy named Tom, an Algebra teacher at the same school, and they have given us two boisterous grandsons, Ricky and (I kid you not) Rex. I adore—you might even say "worship"—my sweet, smart daughter, but at the time, I gave her all kinds of grief over that name choice. "What, 'Fido' wasn't good enough for your second-born?" Diana only rolled her eyes at me. Nobody does an eyeroll like my daughter.

But back to that darkened guest room in Margaret Houlihan's cozy La Mesa bungalow. The truth is, I actually did consider slipping out of my bed and snuggling my way into hers. The temptation was certainly there. The two of us had a history, of course. We'd had a hostile beginning, then a sort of wary warming-up period, then a sexual dalliance—fleeting and fiery—before we'd ultimately ended up at our current status of steadfast friends. I thought it might be possible for us to take a brief digression in that rocky road of ours… just throw caution to the wind and heat up the sheets for a night, as long as we both agreed it was nothing more than scratching an itch.

In fact, I nearly threw off my covers and boldly marched to her room to pitch the idea.

But if you want to know the real, honest-to-God reason I didn't go through with it, here it is: She was sick. And one of the biggest turn-offs known to man is a woman with a nasty cold.

Some knight in shining armor, huh?

I settled for recalling, quite vividly, our one night of passion, in an abandoned hut when we had found ourselves lost in enemy territory. Never let it be said that Hawkeye Pierce didn't seize any opportunity to, uh, seize a beautiful woman.

In the middle of that night, we'd been rattled awake by bombs exploding outside our temporary refuge, all too close. It sounded like the world was coming to an end, and we were scared to death. And yeah, having the impression that you could die at any moment does have a way of making you do things you wouldn't normally do.

I can give you a lot of excuses, but let's cut the bullshit. There was a chemistry there. All our bickering or even outright hostility over the years wasn't because we were indifferent to one another. You don't get a flame without sparks, and you don't get sparks without friction.

Metaphorically speaking, we nearly burned the hut down that night.

But it wasn't love—not romantic love—and nothing ever came of us after that one memorable night. Except a lasting and beautiful friendship, and that made the hellish experience of getting lost, injured, and terrified completely worthwhile.

As I was musing on this and other mysteries of life, I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew the alarm was jolting me awake, causing me to nearly fall off the couch-bed. I did the two things I always did when an alarm woke me: spouted out a string of curse words and smacked the snooze button.

But then my eyes popped open and I flung myself off the couch-bed and onto my feet after all. Oh man, I'd almost forgotten—this was the day I was going to Disneyland!

Once a kid, always a kid.

While it never left my mind for even a second that the drive to Anaheim in and of itself could end up being a fatal mistake, and as a result, I drove with such tension in my shoulders that I was hunched almost comically over the steering wheel… it was an uneventful trip. Margaret noticed my anxiety but only remarked on it in an offhand way, apparently assuming I just didn't enjoy driving the California highways.

Her cold wasn't magically gone this morning, of course, but she reported she was feeling a lot better. All that sleep had done her good. She was so well-rested, in fact, that she was babbling in the most migraine-inducing way about all the minute details of her life since the last time we'd seen each other. Some of it was interesting, sure, but a lot of it was so numbingly tedious that I had a fleeting moment when I wondered if I was the one who was going to end up killing her. It was nothing to joke about—I knew that then as I know it now—but you have to realize how completely bizarre the whole situation was. Radar had had some kind of psychic event that told him Margaret was going to die, and here I was, only a day later, driving her off to Disneyland as if that were some kind of panacea, so we could ride the teacups and commune with Mickey Mouse.

"Absurd" didn't even begin to describe it.

Maybe it wasn't a cure-all, but Disneyland did turn out to be every bit as enchanting as I'd expected, and we spent hours and hours making our way around, taking it all in. We did the Jungle Cruise and the Stagecoach Ride. We rode on Dumbo the Flying Elephant and hopped a Rocket to the Moon. We had a spin in the teacups and felt slightly silly taking a turn on the carousel (though that didn't stop us). We ate junk food and laughed and strolled, wide-eyed, up and down Main Street U.S.A. We acted like a couple of kids, and felt like it too.

When we stopped at the Shooting Gallery so Margaret could try her luck at winning a prize… well, she was an Army brat, after all. Of course she knew how to shoot a gun. Had I tried, I wouldn't have even come close to hitting as many innocent mechanical ducks as she did. She won herself a huge stuffed Dumbo, and as the man behind the counter handed it to her, she took it like a woman in a dream. Her eyes were sparkling, her face was flush with excitement and with the pride of having won. It's the kind of empty phrase that people use too often, but in this case, it was on the money: she was glowing.

She had a great day, I just want to make that clear. I'm willing to bet it was one of the best days of her adult life.

I know it was one of mine.