In Which Chunks Fly

One can never fully appreciate a baby involved bodily fluid tale unless they have experienced one firsthand. I have read the stories of projectile vomiting in public places, have been told the tales of vile excrement being flung across a room, and have listened in on moms talking about puke stained shoulders. Of course I cringe at such horrific occupational hazards of parenthood. But mostly, hearing those stories would make me dread the day I finally had kids of mine own. Or they would merely make me laugh and feel sorry for the recipient on the other end of the stream. But up until now, I never fully appreciated them. I could not have. Now, as I read other peoples stories of such occasions, I can practically feel the vomit dripping off my face, I envision the stench of soiled diapers permeating the air under my nose and I cringe with gag inducing revulsion.

Now that I have been personally violated, now that I am a soiled and seasoned veteran of such horrific tragedies, only now am I worthy of relaying such a tale to you.

My favorite five year old niece and my sixteen month old son were chasing each other back and forth across a thirty foot long bench seat as my family was dining at Pat & Oscars. For ten minutes they frolicked back and forth with stomping feet and joyous laughter. The boy had really worked up a sweat. It was around his usual bedtime, so he had already entered that late night wild child mode, bursting with exaggerated energy. Upon making another pass on bench, he stopped right in front of me, looked up, and started crying. I assumed he had finally hit his breaking point, finally being ready to pass out. I had planned on leaving dinner a few minutes before everyone else anyway, so I swooped down and grabbed my boy and said goodbye to the family. Just then, just at the precise moment when I was bringing in his body towards mine to rest him on my hip, the contents of his belly burst forth upon me.

Torrents of chunky vomit gushed forth from his mouth without prejudice or warning upon my face, neck, shoulder, backpack and subsequently, it ran down my chest. This was no babies formula spit up, no. But rather it was a full-fledged belly full of half liquefied and half solid food. I had finally discovered that he doesn’t chew everything he swallows. His nostrils were as mini fire hoses, two perfect streams of the nights garlic sautéed chicken dinner and apple juice came bursting forth upon me. What have I done to deserve such a vile fate! Had a kid. That’s what I did, I went and had a kid.

At times of crisis such as this, I typically become outwardly calm and go into a very rationally oriented state of problem solving, as my inward panic silently escalates. There was no yelling emanating from my mouth as there would have been if this happened to my wife. But rather a stone cold pair of eyes staring into this vile creature dangling from my arms before me, wondering what it is that I have done to him to deserve such treatment. I immediately shoved my boy out in front of me at arms length, and yet the vomit ceased to flow. But the initial overbearing pressure had already been released upon my face. So now there was a consistently slow, yet steady stream of puke oozing out of his mouth and down onto his shirt as his face turned white and his legs dangled in thin air. And I froze. I froze for five seconds to figure out what to do. Also, initially my instinct was to run. Although lying in my path to the door was thirty or so peacefully dining, unmolested restaurant patrons. Of course my thoughts were not lying with the sanctity of the restaurant and it’s patrons, I was not afraid of offending anyone by running through the place leaving a chunky vomit trail in my wake. I held little regard for the diners’ ability to hold down their food. No, I was just plain embarrassed. So I did what any puke soaked father would do, I hit the floor. Ducking between two of the tables my large extended family had occupied, I hid myself from the public’s view. Soon as I made my move, my brother’s wife stood up, gawking at me as I cowered between the tables. I couldn’t tell whether she laughed or gasped in astonishment, but soon I saw her feet running off somewhere. It took a while for the others to notice what had transpired. I calmly asked for all their napkins. Someone tossed a few napkins my way and I started wiping the larger chunks off my neck and shirt. I peeled my wet shirt away from chest, but it proved futile as I needed my hands to continue the clean up. I flinched in revulsion as my shirt fell back and stuck, with thick pasty puke, back onto my chest as I let it go.

Not so surprisingly, out of the 10 family members I was with, only my sister in law and my mother came to my aid, the only two females above the age of five that were there. The one brother that has a house load of kids started laughing uncontrollably, as he has seen it all before. And the other brothers who do not have kids either choked, gagged, or turned their heads in utter revulsion, perhaps all three.

The sister-in-law came running back and handed me a single restaurant style citrus scented wet nap. The kind that some restaurants dispense to their patrons in the little condom sized paper wrappers. I don’t know when the last time you used a wet nap was, but if you recall, each one is only large enough to wipe down one finger, perhaps two if you use it wisely. And if you take too long to use it the dam thing dries out faster than Black Hockey Jesus’ attempt at blogging about his daughters vagina. I didn’t even look up at her, I was hoping that if I avoided eye contact with anyone else in the restaurant, no one would see me cowering down there all covered in puke. Shortly after I used up the entire wet-nap, all four square inches of it, she handed me another one and said, ‘well, this is all I could find, and I have to unwrap each one individually, so I will hand them to you as I get them out.” I glanced up at her with a look of pure disbelief on my face, ‘really….really,’ was all I could utter in the ugliest sarcastic tone I could muster up. Why she even bothered with those, I don’t know.

My mother was tending to my boy who was sitting where I dropped him, right beside me on the floor. He wasn’t really crying, but never the less he was in a state of emotional distress, letting out soft whimpers as I scraped the larger chunks off my shoulder. She quickly realized that tending to him there was useless, so she swooped him up and ran off to the bathroom. The brothers wife also realized the futility of unwrapping a dozen wet naps, so she followed her to help with my boy.

After cleaning off my face and removing as many chunks as I could from my neck and shirt, I dug through the boys bag and found a clean shirt for him, and some disposable diaper bags for the soiled clothes. Have you ever walked through a restaurant after spilling your drink on yourself? Yeah, well you know that feeling of, I’m a dumbass, well imagine how much bigger of a dumbass I felt walking through the restaurant with half my shirt covered in puke. I needed to get his fresh clothes to him, so I made a b-line for the women’s bathroom. Ever walk into a public bathroom, only to discover that instead of the putrid mens bathroom odor that hits you like a wall upon entering, there is a group of women staring at you through the mirror while manicuring their overly manicured faces? Yeah, well imagine that, but having to walk in there intentionally, and covered in puke. No small blue door sign with a white 1960’s skirt on it was going to slow me down. I needed to get out of that restaurant asap. So I handed off his clothes to my mom…..in the womens bathroom. Then I still had to go all the way back through the restaurant covered in puke, to get to the exit door. By this time, the stench was overbearing. The shirt was so drenched you could see my cold hard hotdad nipples poking through it. I couldn’t bare it any longer. The stench, the stickiness, and the multicolored chunks which were imbedded into the cotton. So standing in the hallway adjacent to the bathrooms, I just yanked the shirt right off. Then I chose the path of least resistance, keeping my eyes focused on the exit door, and walked through the restaurant half naked with a puke soaked shirt hanging from my hand, all the while flexing every muscle in my upper body as nonchalantly as possible. I heard a woman gasp in horror, a child grab her daddies arm and scream, and the manager yell ‘hey’ from behind the sticky front counter, as I just kept on briskly walking.

It turned out that my boy got a stomach bug and puked chunks for nearly a week straight. I would strongly recommend it to any prospective parents. T’was quite the experience. And my wife just happened to be out of town on a business trip all week. It really is a gut wrenching feeling waking up to your boy puking in the middle of the night. We sat out in the hall, me soothing his aching body, as he dry heaved for twenty minutes straight. So far, 16 months into my parenting experiment, that was absolutely the most emotionally challenging event. Buuuut, yesterday he threw my cell phone across the room, grabbed a piece of my neck flesh and yanked on it, bit the neighbors dog, and had an exploding diaper. Oh how sympathy is but a fleeting moment in the grand scheme of my kid terrorizing me.