Friday, February 6, 2015

Vomiting with Rebecca


I’m a power-through-being-sick kind of person. I haven’t been the kind of sick where you can’t get out of bed and need someone to bring you tea and saltines for as long as I can remember.

When you are a kid, you lie limp and moaning, your parents bring you things, let you watch cartoons, and help you hobble to the bathroom. When you are a college student, you skip class and recline in bed all day. When you are a 32 year old teacher with 3 children, life giveth not a shit that you are sick. Not a bit of a shit. No shits.

Here is where it all falls down, too. Because I am what I call “someone who finds the humor in everything,” and my husband calls “someone who is notoriously unsympathetic to sick people.” I learned early in our relationship that he involuntarily prefaces every retch with a noise similar to what a rancher might use to bring in the cattle. It is physically impossible to resist laughing when my husband is throwing up. My heart feels bad for him while my face is giggling its face-ass off.  And then when I am sick he is really nice and takes care of me; which just makes me feel worse.

These experiences do provide opportunities for introspection, though. You can learn things about yourself, such as whether or not you can finish your sentence at the teleconference meeting you are facilitating and hit the mute button before you throw up. I totally can.

Here are some observations I have made through the haze of nausea:
  1. Throwing up into a trash bin full of dirty diapers is a sensory experience that I cannot describe.
  2. Peanut butter smells gross.
  3. Even if they have just WITNESSED YOU HURLING WITH THEIR BEADY LITTLE EYES, small children will still jump on your stomach immediately afterward. They don’t care. And you aren't even allowed to throw them out into the snow. There are laws against it. Imagine you told a full-grown adult co-worker that you had just thrown up in the restroom and that co-worker belted you in the gut. You would murder him or her, am I right? Anyway.
  4. Throwing up is like crossing a rope bridge. Don’t look down.  Now is not the time to reminisce about what you have eaten for the past ten hours. Not. The. Time. 
That's all I have for now. I know this one is short; but I'm a sickie. Give a girl a break.


2 comments:

  1. I stumbled across this while searching through googles infinite wisdom to see if "bloggily" has been added to the dictionary yet (my last ditch effort in trying to win an argument). All words after all, I thought, are made up. I don't see any reason why my constructs would be deemed any less worthy than Homer Simpson's go to lament--"D'oh!" Yep, it's in the dictionary. Sometimes I intentionally use incorrect grammar to test the patience of an exceptionally pedantic grammar nazi, but sometimes I just suck at English. Anyhoo, it's been greatly entertaining to read your thoughts about this and that. Your writing is exactly how you sound in person. No one snarks as wittily as you insomuch that I wouldn't even need a picture to be sure it was. Looks like you've got that whole breeding thing down pretty well! Keep up the good work, I couldn't think of a potter more fit to fashion human clay.

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    1. Your approval means a great deal, my dear friend.

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