Barf

Earlier today I was taking a full frontal shot of puke from my 7 month old son Jack.  This has been a common scene in my house the last couple of years first with my 2 year old daughter Autumn and now Jack, but it got me thinking.  As the ample supply of thick, warm, pungent, mucousy liquid was running down my neck into my shirt I thought about the long, gross journey of this particular pile of barf.  This was human milk that was originally manufactured inside of my wife Nadia, then sucked out of her breasts by my son Jack and down into his little stomach, where it fermented and curdled at a steady 98.6 degrees for about 20 minutes until it was then ready to be expelled back up on to his father.  Mother Nature works in mysterious ways.

For some reason this got me thinking further about vomit and it brought back so many memories from the past…especially memories of the large metal mixing bowl with the little round metal clasp on one side that our mom had me, Jan, Cindy and Nate use when we were sick as kids.  I hate puking.  I can still smell the metal bowl as I layed on the couch all those times retching into it while my my mom held my head and hair.  My earliest puke memory was from when I was about 3 years old.  We had just moved from Minneapolis, MN to Schenectady, NY in 1969 and me, my newborn sister Jan and my parents were living in an apartment until we could find a house to live in.  Normally my mom was always in charge of taking care of us when we were sick but this particular night she was out.  I remember telling my dad that I didn't feel well, and as he picked me up with my head buried in his neck I suddenly leaned forward and barfed all down the back of his brown shirt.

Another early puking story that still has lasting consequences was a few years later on Mothers Day when I was probably 8 or 9 years old.  We took Mom out to a nice restaurant and I ordered the all-you-can-eat BBQ ribs.  Well I ate all I could eat, and more.  I ate and I ate and I ate, priding myself on getting my parent's money's worth by ordering numerous rounds of ribs and stuffing myself to maximum capacity.  Well that night I happened to get the flu and I spent the next 24 hours puking all those ribs back up.  I puked and I puked and it tasted exactly the same coming up as it had going down, but with the bile added for flavor.  That was almost 40 years ago and I still to this day do not eat BBQ flavored anything.  (I have the same problem with Jack Daniels, but that is a whole 'nother story that might get told at a later date.)

Several high school puking episodes immediately jump to mind…like the time I was at a large house keg party in high school and I took over the one available bathroom with a vomiting episode that just wouldn't quit.  I remember all of the extremely angry partiers banging on the door demanding to be let in, but I laid sprawled across the bathroom floor blocking the entrance and refused to let anybody come in.  Or the time I got introduced to the wonders of beer bongs at an outdoor house kegger, and then spent the rest of that July 4^th night laying behind the wood pile out back trying to recover while watching the fireworks from the nearby town park exploding overhead.  Or the time I was riding shotgun in my friend’s car going down the freeway and I knew it was coming up so I reached in the back for an old plastic shopping bag, but in the dark I could not find the opening in time so I just splashed onto the bag and it sprayed up and completely coated my friend, his windshield, all his cd’s…the entire inside of his car.

Those were all embarrassing rookie mistakes, but in my defense I was not much of a drinker in high school.  Another episode that comes to mind during my senior year of high school was the time I spent 2^nd hour with my friend Roman driving around in his car delivering newspapers on his paper route.  He had a 12 pack of Mickey’s Big Mouths malt liquor in the back seat.  In a valiant effort to further the notion that teenage boys have an infinite capacity for stupidity, I decided it would be a good idea to drink 7 of them that hour.  I felt absolutely fantastic the whole next 3^rd hour, but then not so great 4^th hour as I ran to the bathroom and then spent the rest of the school day laying on the floor in a stall puking.  Friends came in to check on me from time to time until finally it was time to get on the bus for home. 

That was a bad day, but not out of the ordinary for us high school kids bent on having fun at any cost.  One summer night this girl and I and another couple were skinny dipping in Fruits Pond near my high school in Waukesha, WI.  The girl I was with was a year or two younger than me and had been drinking way too much.  After swimming and making out in the warm, dark water we dried off and ended up in the front seat of my (parent's) car.  We had gotten somewhat dressed again and just as she leaned over to kiss me she started puking up into her mouth.  I could tell she was trying to play it cool, not ruin the mood and acting like nothing was wrong because she was puking into her mouth and then swallowing it again while still trying to kiss me.  Needless to say we were done making out and I quickly took her home.

That sucked, but it was nothing compared to the night of 3/17/84.  It was my senior year of high school and I had borrowed my parent's blue Pontiac Bonneville station wagon to pick up a bunch of friends to go to a St. Patrick’s Day party at some dude's house.  We got there and they were serving green beer.  I was the designated driver that night so I just had one beer to see what a green beer tasted like.  My friend Aaron Vermillion however was drinking the stuff up like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread and he was getting hammered.  After many hours we finally got everybody back into the car and I started the long process of taking them all back to their respective houses.  It was a cold, snowy night and as I was heading down a dark country road with 6 people crammed into the car I suddenly see the cherries go off behind me and I was being pulled over.

I do not remember what I was pulled over for, but the cop came to my window, smelled the one beer on my breathe, took me out of the car and threw me into the back of his car while he ran a check on my record and my car.  After what seemed like forever everything came up clean.  I explained to him that I was the designated driver who had only one beer and was driving all my drunk friends home, so he decided to let us go.  I got back in the car and slowly took off down the road, but with the cop following right behind me.  Just then Aaron started freaking out in the backseat directly behind me and demanded I pull over immediately because he had to hurl.  I told him there was a cop right behind me and I couldn't possibly pull over and to just hold it.  Suddenly I hear the unmistakable wretching sounds of Aaron trying to puke out of the 4 inch gap at the top of the window.  This particular car had 'child-safety' windows that only rolled down a few inches, so Aaron was trying to projectile the vomit out the small opening and was only half succeeding.  Large quantities of the green beer-puke was hitting the window and splashing back onto him, while an equally large quantity of the stuff was making it out the window-gap and spraying the side of my parent's Pontiac and instantly freezing onto it.

Aaron was the last stop and when I got the b*stard to his house he crawled out and said he was way too sick to deal with anything and he quickly went into the house leaving me alone to clean up.  This was a Saturday night.  Early the next morning my entire family would be piling into this rolling puke-palace to go to church.  F*ck.  I pulled into my driveway and tackled the outside first, using an ice-scraper to chip off the long frozen green streaks of puke running the length of the station wagon while soundly cursing my friend.  Then I pulled into the garage and tackled the insides with towels, soap and water.  I knew it wasn't going to go well in my parent’s cold dark garage with church looming a scant few hours away, but I did my best.  It wasn't even close.  The next morning we got into the car and my dad, mom and siblings all looked around in disgust while sniffing the aroma of Aaron's puke.  For the rest of the years that we owned the car, we never got rid of that smell.  It was always there faintly reminding us of that night, but it would get especially strong in the summertime when the sun would bake the car and the puke smell would rise up strong and proud and slap you in the face as soon as you opened the car door.

I suppose I could go on forever with all the high school and college puke stories but I will spare you.  I will close with my most recent puke episode that occured just last December.  Autumn and I simulataneously got struck by the flu one night, so I allowed her to sleep with me in my bed while my wife vacated the area to sleep in 4-month old Jack's room.  Poor Autumn and I spent the entire night taking turns puking.  She would wimper "Daddy" and then sit up and hurl all over me with the smell permeating everything, at which point I would then run into the bathroom and fill the toilet with my own puke.  Then I would come back to bed, clean us up, sleep for 20 minutes, and then we’d repeat the whole process well into the next morning.

Anyways, I absolutely hate puking and I always have, almost to the point of it being a phobia.  The barf-o-rama scene where everybody pukes on each other in the movie ‘Stand By Me’ always makes me cringe, and after reading the recent Rolling Stone article about Dartmouth College hazing I sure am glad I never went to that disgusting place.  I do not drink until I puke anymore, but I still fear the flu.  Maybe me puking up this whole vomit-blog will be cathartic in some way.  I am extremely sorry for subjecting you poor unsuspecting readers to any of this, and if any of you are still reading I promise to try and come back next time with some interesting non-gross story that has nothing to do with bodily fluids.  Thank you, and good night.