Why I Don’t Like Vomiting

How utterly unpleasant. Here I am, an adult legally allowed to vote, fight in a war and buy as much alcohol as a seven-year-old in France, and I’m hunkered over a toilet wondering if calling my mother would be the grown-up thing to do. Ever since I was a boy I’ve dreaded vomiting. The smell of stomach bile, the sight of a half-digested turkey sandwich mixed with a more thoroughly digested bagel, and an unexplainable completely intact piece of bell pepper—it’s simply no good. Now there are people out there who encourage the nauseated. “Just get it over with,” they say. “You’ll feel better!” Fuck them! They aren’t the ones with their face inches away from the vessel typically reserved for defecation. What do they know about making a person feel better? I just won’t tolerate it. Those holding a pro-vomit agenda simply need to face the facts that vomiting is an unpleasant, physically and emotionally scarring event that can shatter a person’s entire evening.

I’m not sure when my distaste for the act of vomiting began. Perhaps it was all the vomiting as a child. I was like a small machine designed specifically for vomiting. Whenever I suffered from the slightest ailment my body’s immediate reaction was to spew various colored liquid onto irreplaceable objects such as fancy table cloths, oriental carpeting, or whatever else was on hand that looked like it may have been a foreign import. I suspect that my inability to shout groceries somewhere acceptable as a child came from my refusal to acknowledge that it was going to happen. If I ignored it for long enough this nausea would go away like magic. Regardless of my stern volition, I was never able to will away the impending stream of grossness that was destined to spew out of my six-year-old head. Thus, my parents, scarred by high dry-cleaning bills, introduced an object which to this day haunts my dreams: the bucket.

The bucket typically housed the family’s cleaning supplies, but when one of the King children whined of an upset stomach, its contents were emptied and it became a cauldron of our darkest nightmares. “Want me to get the bucket?” The words still make me shiver. The stench of Windex that lingered on that bucket still makes it difficult for me to give my windows the streak-free washing that they deserve. My parents never even put a bag in the bucket for easy cleaning. They would simply wash it out with the hose out back and return it in case of any aftershocks—but the smell still lingered. The bucket still sits in my parents’ broom closet all these years later, patiently waiting to torment the next nauseated person that happens by it. I know that the bucket had nothing to do with my sickness as a child, but to this day when I see it, I tremble.

Since I’ve managed to overcome my childhood refusal to vomit in a toilet, I’ve discovered a whole new world of vomit anxiety that comes with puking in a bathroom. Vomit anxiety comes in stages when dealing with a bathroom. First, you have to accept that you may, indeed, be sick in the near future and move into the bathroom. The action is in the same vein as grabbing an umbrella on the way out the door if you suspect rain. It’s completely precautionary. After all, the feeling may pass, right? You keep telling yourself that.

Stage two involves pacing. There you are; your stomach churns and your mouth feels dry. But do you really want to get down on the floor? The feeling could still pass. After all, if you get sick you’ll have to clean the bathroom, and that’s just a chore. But then it hits: the palms become clammy, the throat begins to tighten, and saliva flow begins to increase. Stage three begins when you accept the inevitable and prostrate yourself in front of that horrible white demon and wait as your insides ready themselves to purge. Your shoulders tense up, your neck arches, and your throat opens up. Then all sorts of ugliness comes out of you. It’s at this point when you realize how long it’s been since you’ve cleaned your toilet, as odor from the unseen residue of human waste makes its way into your nose. If you had taken any stomach-soothing medicine beforehand you watch as it separates itself from the bile you just choked up. A lot of good it did. Then you sit back and flush away the madness like a bad dream.

There is, however, one undeniable perk to the act of vomiting. It automatically gives one an excuse to skip out on anything. Don’t want to go into work today? That’s okay, you just vomited for God’s sake—you could get someone sick! Or worse yet, you could get sick again. At work! Nobody wants to see that. Children constantly get out of school because of it as well. If a child wasn’t feeling up to finishing the day in elementary school, all he or she had to do was throw up during lunch. And within minutes they would come in, cover the mess in sawdust and send the child home with an excused absence and a smiley-face sticker.

Sure there are other perks to vomiting as well. It could save your life one day if you decide to drink a bottle of Lysol, or rid your body of harmful bacteria or viruses. But who needs any of that? I don’t care that vomiting is the healthy alternative to death. I care about wondering if I should throw away my toothbrush after using it to clean my mess of a mouth post-vomitum. I care about that horrible taste of stomach acid and tacos that sticks to the back of your throat. Healthy immune system, my ass. I’m looking into having the vomit center of my brain surgically removed. That’ll show those pro-vomit elitists a thing or two.

The Quad of Earthly Delights

Life isn’t always all that pleasant on a college campus in the spring. Sure, the sky isn’t vomiting an inch and a half of ice on my car anymore, and it no longer gets dark just after lunch, but all, still, is not well. Besides pollen besieging my unprepared sinuses, and the horrible smelling white tree blooming outside of my window, I generally enjoy spring weather. But then they come out. As soon as the first warm breeze wafts its way through town, the rumble of trampling bare feet heading towards the quad can doubtlessly be felt on the far outskirts of town. Overnight, the typically serene and green field on campus becomes an amusement park. I’m honestly surprised the school doesn’t set up pretzel stands.

I’ve talked about this with people in the past. Typically I’m just told that I’m too easy to irritate, which irritates me somewhat. How are these people dirtying up my picturesque quad not widely considered a nuisance? On a sunny day in April the quad looks like a landfill has manifested itself into human form and taken up residency. At first glance it seems like quad-goers simply wish to enjoy the warm sun after a long and unpleasant winter—but no, their true motives are far more sinister. I’m convinced that they’ve taken root on the quad for the sole purpose of annoying me.

This matter goes far beyond simple clutter. The increased number of people slows mobility, and a few hundred thousand people on the quad doesn’t exactly make for the ideal environment for a swift bike ride. So now I have to walk. Which is okay in and of itself, but then I have to deal with people. Now that campus swims with chipper students on a warm weather high, everyone wants to be more social. So the typical “How are you?” from a classmate transforms into genuine curiosity on their part. This is typically bad news for me. Aside from the concept of spiders laying eggs in my brain, nothing terrifies me more than the act of small talk. Whenever I need to speak generally with someone with whom I’m not completely familiar, the social portion of my brain simply sizzles and shuts down leaving only hundred-year-old baseball statistics.

“Kris! What’d I miss in class today? The weather is sooo nice.”

“Did you know that Nap Lajoie batted .376 in the 1904 American League season, Callie?”

“My name is Melissa.”

It just isn’t pretty.

Direct interaction with people doesn’t even bother me as much as some of the indirect interactions which occur while I walk along the quad. First of all, there’s the ever-present threat of being hit in the head by a stray baseball, football, or frisbee. It seems that merely taking up space on the quad isn’t enough for these people; they apparently need to throw things over large groups of people as well. Not only do I have to look out for people who may want to talk to me, but I also have to worry about getting a concussion. It’s like walking through a war zone. If a ball happens to land near you, they also expect you to retrieve it for them as if you wanted to play with them but just didn’t realize it yet. You threw it and missed, asshole—you can get it. I’m telling you, there should be a law.

A lot of people also use this opportunity to practice their instruments en masse. Trying to work out the chord progression to “Crash Into Me”? Take it to the quad. Need to go through your didgeridoo scales? Quad. Attempting to adapt “Dani California” for acoustic guitar, Irish kettle drum, and bongos? The quad is both your practice room and stage. So now I am not only being physically and mentally assaulted by quad-goers, but I’m also forced into listening to their crappy college music. I once saw a person sitting high on the steps of Wilson Hall loudly and sloppily strumming out what I think was “Hotel California” to the entire student body. Where does this impulse to perform come from? These people impose their music on others and nobody can do anything about it. Simply complaining to them makes things worse, because then you’re accused of giving off bad vibes, and that’s just no good for karma, man. Someone please shoot me.

I suppose one advantage that comes from the Garden of Earthly Delights that the quad becomes in the spring appear as if by magic: puppies. These little guys run around and trip over their awkwardly proportioned legs, only to get up to chase a leaf that’s blowing in the wind. Cute little rascals. But then their owners come after them. The people who bring a dog to the quad are never what you would expect by looking at the dog. A small, brown ball of fluff probably belongs to a fraternity-type who goes by the name Smokestack or Gym Locker—and the worst part comes when you find out that Smokestack has named his dog Guinness or some other form of alcohol. If anything, something like this makes me feel sorry for the dog. How would you like to go through life with a name like Miller High Life or Captain Morgan? The only thing that I see in these animals’ future is death by being force-fed grain alcohol—and something about that just doesn’t sit well with me. Also, these guys don’t seem to like it when other males pay attention to their puppy. I assume it’s because it distracts their little Corona from his true purpose: to lure in women and hook them like large mouth bass. Now I’m no animal rights activist, but that doesn’t seem like the ideal reason to invest in a dog.

Now perhaps I’m just being a curmudgeon. But seeing the quad treated like it’s the beach, complete with people sporting bathing suits (in the mountains), bugs the hell out of me. It doesn’t even have to be sunny or even warm for this phenomenon to occur; I regularly see a girl in her bikini on a sixty-degree, mostly cloudy afternoon. It’s as if the mere idea of warmth drives these people into whatever patches of sun they can find. And that’s okay I suppose; my torment will pay off when I can chuckle at their skin cancer.

I Suppose Twinkies Do Look Somewhat Like Baseball Bats

Growing up as the fat kid was never easy. No matter what I did nothing could change the stigma that surrounded my chunky little body. My peers wouldn’t allow me to forget my place in the Western Branch Intermediate social structure as the kid who ate Twinkies every day for lunch despite never having a Twinkie or any other Hostess brand product in my lunches—I rather fancied Goldfish and apples, actually.

In retrospect, I’ve come to appreciate a lot of the insults that my classmates tossed at me, like “if you farted it would crack open the world and you would fall in and die.” Or “you eat a ham everyday before school. An entire ham.” But sometimes the kids just weren’t feeling creative and would simply throw out a “hey, you’re fat” and call it a day. Ah, youth.

Somehow during this turbulent time in my life, I thought it may be good idea to try my hand at sports. I’ll never figure out what I was thinking. Now not only was I the Twinkie kid, but I was also the Twinkie kid who couldn’t hit a baseball to save his fat little life. Like most problems from my childhood, my utter futile attempts at athleticism were probably my parents’ fault. “Come on, Kris. It’ll give you some fresh air and it’ll be fun.” Sure. Fun. That’s exactly what it was. In all likelihood they were probably trying to con me into losing weight, sick of flashing all the empty smiles when they re-assured me that I wasn’t really made entirely out of whale blubber like my classmates insisted.

So there I was, a portly seven-year-old who had to special order his baseball helmets because his head was two sizes too big for the ones provided by the league. While most kids enjoyed their little league years knocking triples into left field, or breaking off increasingly faster and far more dangerous curveballs at the trembling nerds at bat; I remained in right field watching butterflies or throwing rocks into the air. To make matters worse, the area’s little league forced kids into trying out to play, as if they weren’t already guaranteed a spot to begin with. Every year I tried out, and every year I “made the team,” but I imagine that the coaches picked me last, right after the near-sighted kid with one arm.

Thankfully, my sporting life ended early because of two events from the same game that liberated me from the confines of those itchy polyester uniforms. This series of events began when my coach rather stupidly felt sorry for me and decided to let me pitch for one inning. Three pitches later and I was back kicking sand in right field, which I suspect probably had something to do with the sobbing, bloodied eight-year-old who was just hit in the glasses with an out of control baseball.

The next incident occurred while I at bat. I could never really get the hang of making contact with the ball, and at this point my fear of getting smashed in the face by a wild ball was doubled because of the bloodshed I caused earlier. Apparently my violent display of complete ineptitude left a visible scar of discouragement on my face. Reacting to this, Mrs. Fansler, the sporty mother of a teammate whose birthday parties I would often attend, comforted me and gave me pointers on hitting the ball. “Don’t turn your head, Kris. Always remember that. And keep your eye on the ball. Head straight. Eye on the ball. Now get out there.” I walked up to bat, took a deep breath, and readied myself for the coming pitch.

The first ball whizzed past and I clenched my eyes and swung the bat. Strike 1.

“You can do it, Kris!” Mrs. Fansler yelled from her position along the fence of the third base line. “Eye on the ball!”

I straightened myself for the next pitch but shied away when the ball came by; I wasn’t getting hit for anybody, much less so I could hit a ball into a field full of people who hated me.

The outfielders moved in out of anticipation of my weak hitting ability, and I glanced towards Mrs. Fansler once more. She reassured me with a nod and a smile. I turned towards the pitcher and narrowed my eyes. He confidently threw the ball and I whipped the bat around without even thinking. Contact. The ball flew from my bat in a direct path towards Mrs. Fansler’s face. Contact.

Mrs. Fansler lost consciousness briefly and went temporarily blind in her right eye. Needless to say, I wasn’t invited to anymore birthday parties. Now it was either the desperate screams of an injured woman begging for her sight to return, or I simply realized that I wasn’t exactly the sporty type, but that day marked the end of my career in amateur sports. Unfortunately for me, this attitude lasted until I decided to take up playing football three years later. I never had the best memory as a boy.