Gutter Talk
A little before noon on Saturday, I saddled up Hercules and put him in the passenger seat of the station wagon, so we could make the 15 to 20 minute drive to Encino to pick up Elijah from his cousin's house, where Elijah had spent his first sleepover. A moment containing more stereotypically American details could barely have been fabricated by Bob Greene at his hackiest. But this was not a good morning for Merry Sunshine. After about two minutes on the 134, I realized that I'd have to get off the highway, because I needed to vomit, immediately.
This didn't seem fair. I'd had about three sips of a vodka martini the night before, and had filled the rest of the night with club soda. Also, I'd neglected to participate in the consumption of my favorite substance despite its almost omnipresent availability. I wanted to be clear-headed for my weekend alone with my son.
Nevertheless, I'd woken on Saturday morning with a sinus headache unlike anything I'd ever endured, with a concurrent belly full of phlegm. No decongestant or ibuprofen could help me. My equilibrium had shifted, and my body had to purge.
I pulled off at the first exit I found, drove down the ramp, and parked on a crowded residential street in Glendale. I went around back of the car and bent over, until I realized where I was, so I went to the front of the car instead. A parenting rule formed in my mind: If you absolutely have to take an emergency puke in front of someone's house, you should at least have the courtesy of doing it one car's length away from their driveway entrance.
I bent over, and started retching.
At that moment, a large Korean family came home from church. Apparently, they lived in the house in front of which I'd chosen to yack. They looked concerned. I waved them off.
"I pulled off the highway," I said. "I'm just a little sick, that's all."
"Do you want some water?" asked a young, non-vomiting male.
"No," I said. "I've got some in the car."
He looked into the car, where Hercules was sitting, half-asleep, oblivious to my suffering. Well, I thought, they'll have a story to tell for a while. I wonder if they have a blog. And then it happened.
My stomach hitched and released. Out of my mouth came a puddle of regurgitated Zen Berry smoothie from Robek's Juice. And then some more, and more, and more. It took four rounds of barfing until I was able to stagger against the side of the car, functional again to drive. There was no time to recuperate or to apologize to the Korean family about the pool of fetid orange liquid I'd left on their property. I had to see my son.
Though I spent my first 30 minutes in Encino on my sister's bed with a pillow over my head, to block out the light that was penetrating my eyelids like a hot drill, I managed to absorb some details of the sleepover.
"Did you sleep well?" I moaned to Elijah.
"No," he said. "I had some pwobwems."
Apparently, my brother-in-law had to sleep in Ali's room with Elijah, while Ali slept in my sister's room with my sister, who is nine months pregnant. My brother-in-law and sister, who've just moved across the country under these circumstances, looked tired. Saints that they are, they'd taken Elijah and Ali to the park all morning. Both kids had fallen and scraped themselves. Elijah got an ice-cream sandwich as palliative. In other words, they'd survived, but it had hardly been a return to Howard's End.
Elijah, though, was mostly concerned with the details of my illness. In the car on the way home, he asked,
"Daddy?"
"Yes, son?"
"Did you barf in the grass?"
"No."
"Did you barf in the street?"
"No."
"Where did you barf, daddy?"
"I barfed in the gutter."
"What's a gutter?"
"That's the thing between the grass and the street that catches water when it rains."
"Oh. And it catches barf, too."
"Yes."
"Sometimes people barf in the gutter," Elijah said.
"Yes."
"I barf in the gutter, too."
"That's nice."
I'd always intended to teach my son about vomiting in the gutter. But three going on four seemed a little early for that particular lesson. I guess that's what happens when mommy goes out of town.
Comments
Heartwarming and visceral.
Feeling better?
Posted by: karen | June 13, 2006 6:58 AM
It is my experience that children are always impressed with puking stories. The more puke, the greater their awe.
Who, or what, is Hercules?
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My Boston Terrier, a frequent character around these parts...
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Retching on or near the sidewalk is a proud tradition in LA. A description of the activity was perhaps best limned in an old Dragnet episode where Joe Friday, in one of his anti-drug rants, spoke of addicts "retching on the sidewalk." After seeing that episode as a kid I was never happier than when -- after some intense recreational drug use -- I found my gack hitting the concrete.
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