"I'll Never Be Hungry Again"

Warning:  The following contains graphic material.  Reader discretion is advised.  If you are eating, and especially if you are eating hot dogs or mandarin oranges, do not continue reading.  

We had a biological incident at our house last night.  John came out of bed and said he needed a puke bucket.  I was feeling magnanimous, so I told him he could have one, and then dismissed his nausea and sent him to bed.  As you know with a 6 and 8-year-old in the house, dismissing physical complaints is something like a domestic pastime (e.g., taking two days to convince Sara that she wasn’t going deaf, and that the reason her ear hurt was because she fell asleep with her earring pinned between her arm and her head).  Anyway, about 90 minutes later, I heard him come to his door, and without so much as a whimper or a guttural grunt of horrified anticipation, I heard the door open and what sounded like soup being poured from a pot onto the carpet.  Three times.  The entire episode lasted 5-10 seconds, which, all things considered, isn’t that long.  But I think that any reasonable person would agree that it is long enough to make it to the bathroom that is approximately 18” from where he stood.  I see no reason why the carpet should have three bowls of soup, while the toilet and the easily-cleaned tile floor in the bathroom should go hungry.  Alas, such are the caprices of Mother Nature when she slams the gear shift of digestion into reverse and lets off the clutch all at once.  My reaction to a puking child is, and has always been, to ignore whatever needs for empathy the child has, and to grab them by the back of the neck and force them to the nearest puke-appropriate surface.  Watching this happen is not unlike watching somebody in an old-western try to sober up a drunken cowboy.  It’s an aggressive tactic, but it works.  If a child wants empathy, blowing half-digested hot dogs and mandarin oranges all over an uncommonly lush carpet is not the way to get it.  Anyway, I was unfortunately not the first on the scene.  Katelin was, and in spite of all her training, she froze.  She stood in mute horror while at least one, maybe two, of the bowls of soup were served.   My contribution was to emit a (for me) uncommonly strong profanity, and then start shouting helpful things like:  “John!  Why did you ask for a puke bucket if you weren't going to use it?!!”, and “Kate!  We have drills for this!!  Don’t you remember the drills?!!”, and “John!  Did you see the bathroom?  It’s right there!  It is a puke bucket.”  But Kate is an independent type, and for whatever reason, she didn’t want me to continue helping, and I was sent upstairs to wash the boy.  While he was in the tub, I informed him that the next time he vomited on the carpet, he would be cleaning it up, as well as paying for the carpet cleaning.  He began to tear up, and said “I didn’t know.”  I said:  “I know, buddy.  It's all right.  You get one free one, and that was it.”  I then extracted from him a solemn vow to never throw up on a porous surface again.  All parents and alcohol users know what happened next.  Mother Nature loves an encore.  Not 20 minutes later, I was laying wide-eyed in my bed, rocking and moaning in the fetal position, while John lay on a rubber sheet on the floor next to me.  In case the rubber sheet wasn’t big enough or close enough, he had again been provided with a puke bucket, and an extra-large plastic-lined puke garbage can.  This time we did get the tight-throated, wide-eyed, grunting early warning system, and what did he do, but stand straight up and step off the sheet and away from the rubber sheet, Puke Bucket 1, and Puke Bucket 2, ready to serve soup to an entirely different carpet.  Luckily I was able to yell loud enough to get him to mash his face into Puke Bucket 1, and the floor was saved.  He proceeded to throw up 4 more times.  Throughout all this, I heard little from Kate, except when I walked past the basement door, and she looked at me and muttered:  “Should we sell him?”  

But, as Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone With the Wind : "Tomorrow is another day."  (To avoid any unnecessary metaphysical discussions, we will assume that she said this yesterday, making today the "another day" she was referring to.  Incidentally, if I recall correctly, after Rhett and Scarlett's little girl puked on the carpet, Rhett was so mad he shot her pony).  Anyway, the boy seemed to be feeling better this morning, and all seemed right with the world as long as anyone equipped with a sense of olfaction did not open the door to the basement, this in spite of Kate's solid hour spent cleaning.  The carpet cleaners are coming at noon.  With twelve hours of hindsight under our belts, we have decided not to sell the boy.  However, if he pukes on the carpet again, we may be open to the idea of a trade.

P.S.  Scarlett O’Hara actually said a number of things that apply quite well to this whole situation.  It’s uncanny, really.  Perhaps the entire book and movie were nothing more than an elaborate metaphor for dealing with puking children.  See below:

"I can't think about that right now.  If I do, I'll go crazy.  I'll think about that tomorrow."

"Well...but remember, I warned you."

"I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again."

Jared Morton