Don't eat the green salsa -or- The Story of the Bird and the Alligator

I spend the past weekend counting the tiles on Laurie's floor as I engaged in an extremely one-sided conversation with monsieur porcelain. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been extremely sick -- although I'm pretty sure I've missed the toilet (or other socially acceptable vomit container) on every occasion. It's not really a fact I'm proud of -- I'm just extremely good at convincing myself I won't vomit. My stomach will protest otherwise -- small warning signals that slowly escalate into full out, Star Trek red alert warnings. Sparks will be flying from the consoles in my tummy, every red-shirted crewman of my intestine will be dead, and my brain will still refuse to hail my common sense and move to the bathroom.

I'm not sure if it works this way for everyone, but I remember each time I've been really sick right alongside the moments of my greatest triumphs (all two of them). For some reason my brain believes that the time I blew chunks on the elementary school bus is worthy of a slice of grey matter real estate. I've tried erasing these memories with liberal applications of alcohol, but that just leads to more vomiting and well, it becomes a rather vicious cycle.

So, returning to this weekend's past events, I laid on Laurie's floor, curled into the fetal position with the telltale drips of pepto bismal (redubbed "pepto abysmal" for its lacking effects) dribbling down the corner of my mouth. For her part, Laurie was very kind -- she only laughed at me when it was absolutely necessary. Since this was Halloween weekend, we could hear her roommate and company watching scary movies and screaming their girly heads off (not literally, Ichabod). I found this doubly upsetting -- they were watching the fun type of disembowling, while I was stuck with the less favorable method of exposing my guts to the open air. Also, so long as the movie was playing, Laurie refused to leave the bedroom. She feared that if she opened the door, even a crack, a frame of the movie might enter her line of sight and then, well, it would be all over -- neither of us would be sleeping that night. So there we sat, me paralyzed by my stomach and her paralyzed by her nerves.

I crawled over to the door and put my ear against.

"Laurie, what do you think is happening in this part of the movie? I hear a buzzsaw, I think."

"Stop talking about it!"

"But take a guess! I can't quite make it out..."

"I don't want to know. Maybe they're making eachother eat rotten Mexican food."

My stomach churned like an unevenly loaded washing machine hell-bent on the spin cycle.

"That was cold, Laurie."

"Don't make fun of me or I'll kick your belly."

I think she was kidding.

"You're right, sweetheart. We have to rely on eachother for the night. I can keep your mind off the movie if you can get me something to help settle my stomach. We'll work together, like those little birds that pick the teeth of the alligators in Africa."

"I don't like alligators."

"No, of course not.

"The movie's over -- I'll be back with some soda. Try not to barf on my floor while I'm gone."

I promised nothing. And I have the memories to prove it.