by Susan Berran
So it didn’t really surprise me when I started to feel a bit weird and queasy on the drive home. Where we lived was roughly a thirty minute drive out into the countryside. We drove over heaps of hills that twisted, turned, and wound up and down, over, under, around and around—all the way home. The further we went, the worse I felt.
“Mooom, I feel sick,” I whined.
“Look out the windows,” Mom replied, as she usually did when I felt carsick. Yeah, like looking out the windows is somehow going to magically stop my guts from exploding. My gut doesn’t have eyes, Mom! And anyway, it was totally dark. What was I supposed to look at!?
“Mooom, it’s getting worse.”
“We’re nearly home,” she gave me a desperate glance. I knew she was fibbing.
We continued to wind through the hills, going around one way, back the other way, and around another way, and back the other way, and blllu . . . around and around bllllu. . . and around and around and around and . . . “Mooom I’m gonna . . .”
“Just a bit further! We just hit the edge of town.”
“I don’t think I can hold . . . blllllu. . .”
“Hang on! We’re in our street!”
“I’m not gonna . . . blllllu . . .”
“Hang on! There’s our house!”
“I’m gonna . . . blllllu . . .”
“Hold on! We’re in the driveway!”
Bluuurrrrrrrrrrrrr!
What is it with parents?! We try to warn them. We try to do the right thing. We tell them a hundred times on the trip that we need to pee or puke. “How bad?” they ask. “Really bad,” we reply. Then we have to go all the way up to really reeeally reeeally bad! But still they ask, “Can you hold it?” “No!” we yell.
And then when your bladder or guts bursts all over the place they get all like “Why didn’t you tell me it was that bad?” Arghhh! What is it that they don’t understand about “I reeeally need to go NOW!”? And they reckon we don’t listen!
Bluuurrrrrrrr!!
The car screeched to a halt in our driveway. I had my hands tightly pressed against my mouth, trying to hold back any more vomit from escaping. But it was useless. Chunks of yesterday’s dinner, including carrots, peas, and corn forced their way through the gaps between my fingers.
Bluuurrrrrrrr!!
Yellow, slimy liquid instantly sprayed smack into the back of Mom’s head, parting her hair before flowing down her neck and squishing between her back and the seat.
Bluuurrrrrrrr!!
Another load slammed into the back of her seat right in front of me, before bouncing straight back to splash all over me as well.
“Couldn’t you hold on for just a few more seconds until we were out of the car!?” Mom whined.
If I wasn’t so busy barfing like a massive human volcano, I would have said something like . . . “Yes Mom, yes. I could have held it in a bit longer. But I thought it’d be way more fun to chuck-up all over myself, the car, and you because I love the smell and feel of warm vomit running down my face so much.” Geez, as if! (Although seeing Mom’s face in the mirror as the back of her head was smothered in vomit was pretty cool.)
Mom finally yanked on the handbrake, flung open her door, took off to the side of the house, grabbed the hose, turned it on, ran back down, opened my door, wrenched me out and began spraying water all over the car seats to wash the chuck off of them so they wouldn’t stain. The water sent bits of corn, carrot, and other food chunks shooting straight back at us like little veggie bullets, belting into us at warp speed—man, they hurt too.
Then Mom started to hose herself off! Hello? Kid being sick here! What about me?! So I’m left standing there covered head to toe with slimy, disgusting puke and after what seemed like forever, Mom turns to me and says, “So are you starting to feel any better?”
Hmmm, how can I respond to that without getting in trouble for really bad swearing? I say nothing and hold my chuck-covered hands out assuming Mom would finally start hosing me off. But instead, she hands me the hose and heads straight for the house saying, “I feel so gross. I’m going in for a shower. And you need to hurry up as well, it’s past your bedtime!”
Great, thanks Mom!
To make matters even worse—if that was at all possible—after I quickly soak myself and begin to follow Mom into the house, she turns around and tells me that I have to totally strip off before I can even think about coming back into the house because I’m dripping spew. Aha, so she didn’t want me dripping puke and water through the house but it was fine for me to die of pneumonia.
At least it was totally dark so the neighbors wouldn’t see me. I quickly started to strip off near the front door ready to do the quick nudey dash through the house to the bathroom. Suddenly, I heard Mom call from inside, “Oh sorry it’s dark. I’ll turn on the floodlights for you.”
Woop woop woop woop woop woop
“Oops, sorry, that’s the alarm. This one’s the light switch.”
Noooooo!
Great. I reckon within a split second every house in the street had someone peering through their window to see why our alarm was screeching—just as a gigantic floodlight lit up my backside like a full moon as I desperately stumbled into the house.
Shivering uncontrollably and covered in goose bumps the size of eggs, I raced straight to the shower.
I was amazed at how many chunks of food and puke were hiding on me. Bits of food kept dropping off me as I washed, so I had to squash them down the drain hole with my toes. By the time I finished my shower I was still feeling crappy, so I headed straight to bed. But Mom was certain that I just needed to eat something before I went to sleep to help me feel better again.
I crawled into bed, curled up, and felt like I was ready to die. Ten minutes later, Mom came strolling into my bedroom with a few slabs of toast smothered in butter saying, “A piece of toast will make you feel heaps better.”
“But I don’t want anything to eat,” I moaned.
“Trust me, toast is the best thing for you.”
“But, I don’t feel good.”
“Just one piece of toast,” Mom persisted.
“I don’t want anything.”
“Just try to eat it. You’ll feel better.”
“I feel sick again.”
“Because you haven’t eaten your toast!”
“I don’t want any toast.”
“Eat it.”
“I don’t want—”
“Eat it!”
“I feel—”
“Eat it!!”
What was wrong with her!? Mom just wouldn’t let up.
“I’m going to be—”
Bluurrrrrr
“Quick, get to the toilet!” Mom yelled.
I dove out of bed.
Bluurrrrrr
My chuck splattered across the bedroom wall beside me as I stood up.
“Run!” Mom screamed in my ear.
I staggered towards the doorway— Bluurrrrrr—spraying the door with vomit as I went through.
“Don’t stop,” Mom bellowed from behind me. Bluurrrrrr. I staggered through the living room. Bluurrrrrr. Spewing across the TV. Bluurrrrrr. Throwing up along the couch. Bluurrrrrr. And the coffee table. Bluurrrrrr. Up the steps. Bluurrrrrr. I stumbled along the hallway. Bluurrrrrr. Trying to step over the vomit I was chucking-up in front of my own feet. Bluurrrrrr.
“Put your hands over your mouth!” Mom yelled desperately.
Bluurrrrrr. It forced its way between my fingers. So now instead of one huge dump in front of each step, it was spraying all over the place like a powerful sprinkler! Bluurrrrrr. Up the hallway walls—both sides! The ceiling, the floor, the lights, the pictures hanging on the walls—nothing was safe!
“OMG! Hold your mouth closed tighter,” Mom screamed in horror. I quickly forced both hands as tightly as I possibly could over my mouth. I knew the toilet was just ahead. With the door closed, I now had both hands busy trying to hold spew in. Bluurrrrrr.
Ewwwwwww.
&nb
sp; Nothing came out of my mouth that time . . . it all came out through my nose!
If you’ve ever had vomit come out of your nose, or “nose barfed,” you’ll know what I mean. It burns! And it’s even worse when the veggie chunks burst out of your nostrils like machine gun fire!
I nose-barfed all over the toilet door, but it bounced straight back towards my face. I ducked. Mom didn’t. She caught the whole lot. Splash. Right in her wide open mouth.
“In the toilet! In the toilet!” Mom was screaming in total meltdown as she continued spitting out my veggie chunks.
With one hand still tightly covering my mouth, I reached out and tried to turn the toilet door handle. But with slimy spew now coating the doorknob and my hands, it just kept slipping. Suddenly, Mom’s arm shot through from behind me to open the door.
She shoved the door back so hard that the door handle on the other side smashed, embedding straight into the wall, making a nice neat hole through the plaster. I dove forward, lifted the toilet lid, took my other hand away from my mouth, and . . .
Hey, whadya know, I was empty. Not one more drop came out, and I felt pretty good too. Of course I told mom that I still felt sick and reeeally weak so that I could have another shower and go straight back to bed—after all, there was no way I wanted to clean that mess up.
For the next three hours, I could hear Mom washing walls and lights and pictures and ceiling and cupboards and carpet and doors and everything else. She washed my bedroom, the living room, the stairs, the hallway . . . and every now and then I heard Mom go Bluurrrr into a bucket that she was dragging along with her.
Yep, there’s nothing else in the world worse than cleaning up spew—especially someone else’s. Maybe she should have a piece of toast. :)
So you see, I chucked-up, I chucked sideways, I chucked over, I chucked under . . . and I definitely chucked-DOWN.
Ok, so here’s an interesting little story from a few years ago when I was just a little guy at day care. There I was just sitting around in the sandpit. I was hanging out, minding my own business, making the world’s coolest and most awesome sandcastle, with these excellent flags made out of leaves, wicked seashell windows, and tiny little acorn horses that I’d made to go with the King’s popsicle stick guards.
Next thing I knew, this solid, dorky looking kid with long, black, curly hair, and who was missing most of his “baby” teeth, comes waddling over to me. As his shadow fell across my castle, I looked up, squinting towards the sun and said “Hi” but he just stood there in his bright orange, baggy pants and Spongebob Squarepants t-shirt, staring at me with a strange look on his plump, freckled face.
I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me or not, so I said “Hi” again.
“Urgh,” he grunted, barely moving a muscle. That’s when I noticed the line of dribble slowly sneaking from the corner of his mouth and sliding down toward his chin. I kept working on my totally fantasmagorical sandcastle, but from the corner of my eye I was still studying the string of drool ever so slowly sliding, stretching, and winding its way down his chin until . . . ssssslurp . . .in the blink of an eye he sucked the slobber back up into his mouth and it was gone.
“Do you wanna play?” I asked.
“Urgh,” he shrugged. Then another long string of dribble started slowly stretching down from the corner of his mouth, across his chin, and winding through his minefield of freckles. This guy was acting weird!
But then I had an idea. I figured that if I could get him to play with me, then I could use his string of drool to make an awesome moat around my castle and a flowing river through the little town I was making.
But he still refused to play. He just stood there staring and grunting and sucking his dribble back up through his teeth when it reached the tip of his chin.
I was just about to give up asking him to play, but then I was blinded for a second as the sun bounced off something else on his face. It was so big and bright. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Obviously I’d been so busy focusing on all of the dribble action that I hadn’t noticed the massively giant “thing” on his forehead. It was humongous! Was he growing a second nose on his face? Or had I just discovered a brand new planet in our solar system, attached to his head?
As I continued to stare, I realized it was the world’s biggest, fattest, slimiest pimple! It was the size of a pancake stack, shoved smack-bang in the middle of his greasy forehead. It was the Tyrannosaurus Rex of pimples!
I was wondering if it would suddenly open up and swallow his head whole. I was completely hypnotized by the throbbing mountain of pus in front of me and it seemed to be growing larger every minute. Hey, if that thing erupted, there’d be thick, yellow pus raining down over the entire sandpit, the daycare, or even the town!
“So do you wanna play?” I asked one final time, trying to ignore the disgusting sore on his head.
I decided to try and appeal to a boy’s mutual dislike of girls. “I only like playing with boys. Girls are gross!” Hey, I was only three and three quarters!
The strange kid sucked in the latest line of dribble hanging from the corner of his mouth and began to lower his thick, bushy eyebrows that were weirdly joined in the middle and ran from one side of his head to the other, and glared at me.
“It’d be cool having another boy around to play with.” I tried again.
He stepped towards me but now his eyes had narrowed even more, squinting as his eyebrow shaped into a sharp arrow pointing straight down the middle of his face. He made another loud grunting noise.
I realized he actually looked really peeved off with me for some reason. He was just about to say something to me when one of the carers called out “Samantha.”
Wait, isn’t that a girl’s name? Oops! Hmmm, now I knew why she was grunting at me as if she was about to smoosh me into the ground like a snail being sat on by an overweight elephant . . . because she was about to smoosh me into the ground like a snail being sat on by an overweight elephant.
He . . . I mean she turned and started heading off towards the other girls. But when she saw the carer turn around and begin to wander away, Samantha suddenly turned back and began to run . . . straight towards me! Arghhh! She was going to kill me for calling her a boy.
She was going to slap me about with her dribble and snap my head off with her bare hands! I was doomed. She was coming right at me like some sort of super-charged tank! She was about to rip right through me like a charging rhinoceros when suddenly she stopped.
She stopped dead in front of my face, with only my award-winning castle standing between us. I could feel her warm, smelly breath and hear the gurgling of drool washing about inside her mouth. I could also see the whitehead on top of her monstrous pimple throbbing angrily, ready to blow.
Samantha then kicked the crap out of my awesome sandcastle! WHYyyy! Sand smacked into my face and was flying through the air in every direction, including into my eyes and up my nose. Seashells shot into my mouth, plugged my nostrils, blocked my ears, and stung my eyes! She stomped my poor little acorn horses into the ground, shredded the guards, and sent them splintering in all directions.
Then Samantha leaned forward and stuck her creepy, oily face only a centimeter away from mine—pewww—her breath was worse than the backside of a dead skunk that had exploded when it was run over by a steam roller!
But then, just as I thought she was about to open her mouth, shove me in, and swallow me whole, she blurted out, “Eeewwwww! Your nose ran!” before turning and running away to play with the other girls.
“What? Arggghhhhh!” I screamed at the top of my lungs before leaping from the sandpit!
“My nose ran?! Where did it run to?!” I threw both hands up to my head, covering the middle of my face so that no one else would see the gaping hole. Beneath my clasped hands I could feel a hard lump where my nose used to be . . . bone?!! It had to be my nose bone protruding from my skull! I could also feel a thick, cold liquid slowly rolling down across my face. Blood? “Arggghhhhh!!” I took off, raci
ng around the grounds like a cheetah with its butt on fire.
All the kids were staring at me as I bawled my eyes out, blubbering at the top of my lungs. Why had my nose run away? Maybe it had entered a nose race? Yeah, maybe it was running with heaps of other noses in a face-parts marathon to prepare for the Olympics or something.
I was really worried my face was now going to have this massive gaping hole right in the middle of it until my nose decided to come back home! And what if my eyes dropped down and rolled out of the hole in the front of my face? Or my brain slipped out and got jammed halfway? And what really scared me was that if my brain dropped onto the floor, I had no idea how to wash it.
Great! I’d be like the backside of a mole rat . . . really ugly, no brains, and lost in the dark! And it was all Sucky Samantha’s fault! Obviously, when she leaned in really close to my face, her super bad breath and greasy face scared my nose and made it leap off and run away! And it was now running around, somewhere, all on its own, and I had no idea where to even start looking for it! I had to find my nose fast, because I could feel myself getting more and more confused by the minute as my brain slowly slopped about!
I ran around the playground, kicking about toys, drinks, and anything else in my path. Through the sandbox, using my feet and elbows to shove things about, searching every nook and cranny, while at the same time screaming and trying to hold back tears. “Nose. Stop running. Come back!!” I yelled at the top of my voice. I was totally freaking out! I had to find my nose.
One of the carers finally came over to find out what was going on. I cried while still clasping my hands across my face. “My nose ran away and now my face is leaking and my brain is dropping out!” I screamed at her through the flood of tears.
(Hey! I was still only three and three quarters!)
The carer tried to convince me that my nose hadn’t “run away” just “ran.” Of course, I didn’t believe her . . . until she took me inside and put me in front of the mirror to prove to me that I didn’t have a great big massive hole in the middle of my face. As I slowly brought my hands down from my face, thick yellowy-green boogers overflowed from my cupped hands and escaped between my fingers like long green yoyos. Thin long strands stretched all the way from my face to my hands like gooey spider webs. There was so much snot that some had started to go crusty, gluing my hands together.
