So, I have a sensitive stomach. So sensitive that I’ve been known to gag at the sight of gray snow littered with garbage. Or oh my God, when someone spits on the street. My stomach is churning with the thought of it all right now.
I had told my mother that I wasn’t feeling well…I was queasy. She nodded and told me to get my ass on the bus. I got on the bus and right there where I sat someone had hocked a loogie. I kept trying to look away and avoid it but it was a [insert disaster of your choice] and I just couldn’t look away. Everywhere my eyes went it was like that giant wad of spit and phlegm had eyes as well they were following me.
I got that warm feeling in my throat – kind of like the one I’m getting now just from the memory – and all of a sudden there were tiny bits of my breakfast on the outside of my stomach inside of in. Boiled egg and toast splattered all over the center aisle of my school bus. Sloshing around while all of these kids around me screamed and jumped and tried to avoid me at all costs because I could become Heather, The Barf Machine!
Of course it was elementary school and it was soon forgotten until another little boy or girl did something more embarrassing like peeing on themselves in the second grade.
Or at least it was forgotten until I did a repeat performance of The Great Bus Barfing Caper six years later. In the eighth grade. All over my clarinet case. Just as the boy I was madly in love with was about to turn around and utter a few precious words to me…
6 Comments
Ewwwww.
I once turned around in 9th grade to talk to The. Popular. Girl at the desk behind me. Before I could get one word out, I sneezed. Like, the ectoplasm sneeze. All over her books, her designer sweat-suit outfit, all of it.
Yeah, I totally feel you.
OMG – bus barfing…and in front of ‘the boy’. A catastrophe of gigantic proportions.
‘Plane loos are my downfall. Malodorous hell holes.
That happened to me during show and tell once in 3rd grade.
I was in front on the class and showed them alright!
I never threw up at school, other than in the nurse’s office. But, in the 11th grade I had my elbow propped on my desk and my chin in my hand when I fell asleep. I woke myself up snoring and, as if the sound of my snort wasn’t bad enough, I did one of those big neck bobs as I awoke…just so everyone could be totally sure who let out such a sound.
Oh no, barfing in front of The Boy =( It’s awful, and I’m sure it was traumatic, but is it a little funny to remember now?
If it makes you feel better, one time The Boy that I was interested in (7th grade, I think?) asked me if he could borrow a pen. I reached into my backpack where I always carried the pens and whipped out a tampon.
Awesome.
Oh lord, my mom is the same way. Just mention booger and she can’t stop gagging.
You two would be fun at parties.