Ever puke in public? (This one's gonna be gross, I'm sure)

In My Humble Opinion
21

Once as a kid during a family vacation to one of the quaint Amish settlements in Pennsylvania. Fell violently ill and couldn’t keep anything down. As a last ditch effort to save the vacation, my mother took me to a nearby restaurant and practically force fed me soup and tea. I almost made it to the bathroom, but instead, I deposited my recent meal onto the table of a very horrified, extremely disgusted family.

We trekked home after that, vacation ruined.

Several other times as an adult, but all due to drinking. Only memorable one was in NYC. Had way too much to drink in some bar or another on Bleeker St, but was okay until a buddy suggested we hit another bar. Something about the short flight of steps leading up to street level and the fresh night air did me in. Got to the curb and dispensed with my drinks, and felt so much better that I was okay to hit the next bar.

What makes it memorable to me (beside my youthful pride at the time in being able to continue drinking afterward) is that no one on the busy street even batted an eye.

22

Sort of.

After a debaucherous prom night, I woke up with a killer hangover. Since I had spent the night in NYC, I got a ride with my friend and her dad back to NJ. Lucky for me, there was lots of stop and go traffic, which already makes me nauseated, so I wound up throwing up into a handy plastic bag, which I held onto after I was dropped off at the restaurant where my mom was (I couldn’t get into the house because I didn’t have my keys). So I stumble over to my mom is eating with a friend of hers, and wait for them to finish with a giant headache and a bag full of vomit.

When she noticed the bag, they mysterously lost their appetite and my mom drove me home and made fun of my hangover.

23

Just twice:

  1. When I was nine and our plane was descending. I spent the whole descent with my face in the bag.

  2. When I was in high school—this is much more embarrassing–and one of my friends was with me and my mom in the car, getting fast food. I can’t remember all the details, but I think we had already eaten at least some of the stuff. And then my friend started singing “Here she comes on the run with a burger on a bun and a glass of Coke on the side.” For some reason this struck me as being hysterically funny, and I laughed so hard that I got sick. I remember running for the Dumpster to lose my recent lunch. And when I got back, those other two people were LAUGHING!

Don’t you ever sing that song to me. Ever.

24

Several Times:

First Big Memory: Puking while running up a flight of stairs because I had just swallowed a feather. I was nine.

Old People Smell, New Car Smell and a Full Stomach To Not Mix: After taking a great effort to each everything on my plate at a restaurant with my mom and grand parents, my stomach was bloated from too much chinese food. I was trapped in the back seat of my grandfather’s Bonneville that was years old but, due to lack of use, smelled like new. I hate the new car smell. And I was trapped in the back seat with my 85 year old grand mother whom I adored, but she had that old people smell that is never palatable. It was a miserable experience until I just BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARF right onto the floor mat. A targeted gack job. Very quick clean up by removing the mat and hosing it off and I never got credit for that. But I did feel much better and can still remember the sight of the chinese food on the floor mat and thinking, " It looks just like it did on my plate."

Highest I’ve Ever Hurled: On a flight to Frankfurt. I had a severe migraine and I was standing in line for the lavatory when the flight attendants started preparing the food. The smell just did me in ( and it wasn’t bad at all, but when you have a migraine, everything annoys you.) and without any warning, I just started puking. The flight attendant grabbed me by the back of my outfit and before I knew it, I was headfirst in a bag that was full of the soon to be used ( but not anymore) plastic utensils. I barfed pretty much the rest of the flight and was utterly miserable until we landed. Oh, did I mention I was 2nd in charge of a group of employees on a trip over to Germany? I felt much better, other than being completely exhausted, and we had the same flight crew back and gee…for some reason, they remembered me. It was that horrid experience that made me realize to go and get help for my migraines.
Topsy Turvy: August 1, 2004 was a high water mark day in the life of me. Vertigo hit me like a mack truck and every time I moved my head just.a.smidgen. my equilibrium made my brain BAM against the other side of my head with the result of BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRF! It started with barfing in the parking lot of a church with a major hurling episode in a hospital clinic. (That, my friends, is how you get a room faster is by barfing on their floors.) oH, and then because of all the puking, the diarhea started…right on the exam table. Good Times! I was too busy with my world a spinning to be mortified. After two days of near nonstop barfing every time I moved my head and nothing left to give, I was ready for a bullet. Oh, and I lost 55% of my hearing on that fateful day. Wooo me!
All in all, I think it is a two way tie with the Airplane and Vertigo for pure misery. At least with the Vertigo, my head didn’t feel like it was going to explode.

25

British Air, flying first class with my Mother from Philadelphia to Heathrow. A “friend” gave me a pill “that will pleasantly knock you out for the five or six hours of the overnight flight.”

Well, whatever the dear boy gave me, I was violently allergic to, and we were barely at cruising speed before my innards wanted very much to be outards, and in no uncertain terms, thank you.

I spent the whole flight crawling to the first class toilet and getting to know it very well–every inch of it, close-up. During the few moments I was well enough to collapse in my bed, I apologized profoundly to the flight attendants and warned them not to start cleaning it up yet . . . “Ummmm, excuse me . . .”

By Hour Four, I was dearly wishing for a mid-ocean explosion. And by the time we reached London, I had all the energy and charm of a damp sock.

26

But a very vibrantly colored and snazzy-looking damp sock, I’m sure!

Thankfully, my only drunken vomiting took place right where I belonged - in the bathroom, head in the toilet. (It was the first time I got drunk - Hornsby’s, Jose Cuervo, & peppermint schnapps with a little pork barbecue sandwich on top for good measure. Ugh. It’s a wonder I ever drank again!)

27

I threw up in front of Barry Levinson and George Lucas.

It was at a screening for Levinson’s movie “Sleepers” at Skywalker Ranch. I’d planned to go with a bunch of co-workers, but they all started to cancel, one by one, the day of the movie. The only ones left were me and the one co-worker who hadn’t been to lunch with all of us the day before.

Lucas introduced Levinson, who made a little speech before the movie about how it was a rough cut, and he just wanted to see how audiences reacted before they went into final editing. Then the movie started, and it wasn’t long before I started feeling nauseated. I didn’t want to be rude and walk out in the middle of a private screening, so I stuck it out. After what seemed like three hours, I realize I’m not going to be able to last, so I’d better think about making a graceful exit pretty soon.

Then, there’s a close-up shot of somebody slicing the head off a fish with a cleaver. I jump up and run towards the exit as quietly and politely but as quickly as I can.

As I get to the theater door, I realize that I put it off too long. Luckily, I spot the men’s room door directly across from the theater exit. I walk quickly there and right as I get to the door to the bathroom – I lose it. I throw up all over my hands and the front of my shirt.

I get into a stall, proceed to lose what seems like everything I’ve eaten since I moved to California three years ago, and likely some of the stuff I had on the plane flight over. I then wash up as best as I can in the sink, wait for everything to dry, go back in the stall and throw up again, then wash up again. The movie still isn’t over at this point, so I decide to brave my way back in.

As I’m leaving the bathroom, I remember that on the dash in I noticed a bunch of people standing outside the theater talking to each other, and I realize that I’m going to have to pass them on the way out. I figure if I just look straight ahead, they won’t notice me and I won’t have to be embarrassed. Of course, as I’m leaving I have to glance over, and I see that it’s Levinson standing there with Lucas and a bunch of other Marin county film types.

I was tempted to go back out and say, “I liked Rain Man, honest!” But then I realized that I’d been watching the movie for an hour before realizing that I did have food poisoning, and it wasn’t just that the movie was so bad.

28

That, my friend, is a post.

29

In public, one two memorable occasions. Both self induced.

The first was when a summer that I spent hitchhiking around Japan. I was young, and had a blast. I was on Miyajima Island and had plans to spend the night at a campground there. I thought that there would be a restaurant or food of any sorts and didn’t expect that there was absolutely nothing. Fortunately, or, as the story turns out, perhaps unfortunately, there was a group of Japanese Naval Self Defense boys there who invited me to join their BBQ. Soon we were chugging beer to celibate the great friendship between our two wonderful countries. (Note to self: trying to out-drink a single sailor may be nuts, trying to out-drink a camp full is insane.) Having not having eaten all day, the quickly consumed food did little to slow the buckets of beer I consumed. Soon it was all coming out, to the great amusement of some of Japan’s finest defenders. A couple of them took me over to the rest room and joked and laughed the whole time I was violently heaving what little was there in my stomach. There were nice, and actually let me crash in one of their tents, rather than making me put up mine in that condition.

The second was when I ran into a favorite watering hole in Roppongi to see if my friend was there so we could grab a bite to eat. A client from the States happened to be there, and so started the drinkfest, again, without the benefit of having consumed food. By the time I left, I was so trashed that when I got into a taxi for the ride back I couldn’t handle the moving car. Taxi drivers stop really quick when you tell them you feel sick. So, I’m in the middle of Tokyo, unable to ride in a taxi, the subways are stopped and so I decide to hoof it back. I get part way before getting completely lost. I called my wife (now exwife, and although that didn’t help it’s not the reason for the change in status) and asked for directions. Since Japan doesn’t have many street names, I would find a block address, and she would try to find that on a map, and tell me which way to go. Not an easy process. Somewhere along the way, it all came up again. I leaned over a rail and deposited it on the road, but it splashed on my pants. Yuck. I finally got to where I could figure out the rest of the way home.

30

Only once that I can remember (but I really don’t…).

On my 21st birthday a friend and her husband parked their car at Bar 1, where we met. Then we all piled into my minivan (my mom was the designated driver) and went to bars 2-? before driving my friend and her husband back to Bar 1 to pick up their car. I very vaguely remember puking in the parking lot. I don’t remember the actual puking itself, but I remember hearing comforting comments from my friend while she held my hair (which I didn’t know she was doing; my mom told me that a couple days later).

Good times.

31

When I was about eight, my family took a vacation to France. The minute we got out of the airport, we went to some sort of small grocery store. The smell of the meats and cheeses made me more and more queasy, until I had to go outside. I sat on the sill of the window and promptly puked between my shoes. I sat there in misery until my aunt suggested that I could move.

I also plastered in inside of a van with projectile vomit the same year.

32

when i was 9 or so … in church … during the service.

i was in the choir at the time.

33

Beer + Beef Jerky + Red Man Chewing Tobacco + idiot friend driving erratically = Argent Towers opening the car door and puking right on the curb in front of a sidewalk full of late-night revelers.

It was a drive-by puking.

34

I threw up after a ride on one of those when I was about 10 or 11. It was at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. A combination of too much amusement park food, heat and the spinning sensation made me sick. I made it off the ride, but just barely. I got out the door to the metal steps, leaned over and barfed into some bushes.

I threw up in the parking garage at work one day years ago. I’d been hit with a ferocious migrane and was leaving to go home when I threw up behind my car. Luckily, they stored the ice-melt stuff and bags of sand near my parking spot and I managed to rip open a bag of and and cover up the puddle of vomit.

35

I spewed some pink variety of Boone’s over the side of a stucco balcony at an aquaintence’s apartment complex. In broad daylight. I was too blitzed to notice if I had an audience.

That was a bad, bad day.

36

SolGrundy Wins!

I wish I could throw up in front of someone famous.

37

My boyfriend and I were spending the evening with his friend and his friend’s date (who had also dated my boyfriend during our breakup about a month prior). I was feeling insecure because my boyfriend had gone out with her, but I was trying to hide it. Long story short, I ended up drinking a little more than I should have.

We were on our way home with my boyfriend and I in one car with the other couple following us. I started getting really sick while we were on the interstate, but luckily there was a plastic bag in the car so I threw up in that. I felt relieved that I managed to do it without the others knowing, but we had to get the bag out of the car so we pulled off at a rest area and the other car followed us. My boyfriend said he would pretend that he had to go to the restroom and throw the bag away when he got in there, but when he got out of the car he held up the bag for them to see and made a face so they knew exactly what was in it.

He thought he was funny. I could have cheerfully killed him.

38

Three times that I can remember:

About 15 years ago, I forgot not to eat anything before having an MRI scan. I remembered after eating half a piece of toast. That was enough - once the contrast medium was injected, I felt the odd coolness rising up my arm, then once it poured into my chest, I was immediately ill.

About seven years ago, I had a case of flu silently brewing in me. Just walking along the street, same as every other day, and the emergency call arrives at my consciousness. I just barely had enough time to get out of the flow of pedestrians to deliver one of those coughing-barfs onto a parking meter: Hrack!

Last year at Faire, someone was passing a flask of “wrong” - some sort of rum that’s right at the practical maximum proof - 191. Most people taste it, feel the intense sensation that they just swilled jet fuel and say “That’s just wrong!” Well, I had just a little nip of it (and I mean just a little nip!) only to see what the commotion was about. Five minutes later, my body was telling me that it was definitely a wrong thing to drink, and I’m behind an RV attempting to eject it from my stomach. Only problem is I’m unable to vomit, thanks to a fundoplication operation a couple years ago. My stomach doesn’t care, and it’s doing all it can to empty itself. I wound up with a hernia thanks to all that pressure having no place to escape.

39

I can think of few things that would be more horrid than not being able to throw up. Not that I enjoy the sensation, mind you, but Og help me if I had to endure all of the nausea and discomfort and not be able to just hurl and get it over with. What if you get another flu? Or food poisoning? How will you manage??? :eek:

40

I feel better- I thought my throwing up in a restaurant story was bad.

Mr. Neville and I were in Napa, and went to a restaurant for dinner after a day of wine-tasting. I wasn’t feeling great- my stomach was a little off to begin with, and the wine didn’t really help. I got sole in a cream sauce for my dinner. About midway through, I thought I felt a burp coming, so I let it out.

Wrong. I puked on my plate. I went running to the bathroom after that, and got to see my meal come up in reverse order. I was absolutely humiliated because I vomited on my plate- I thought of changing my name and moving to Australia, but I realized the Aussies probably don’t want people who puke on their plate, either…

What came up after eating the sole in cream sauce looked an awful lot like the sole had before I ate it, and I don’t even think the waiter noticed that it was puke. I lost my taste for cream sauces in that incident.

Ugh. I’ve had vomiting like that, though not in public. I got food poisoning from an Indian buffet last year while I was visiting my in-laws. I think I threw up stuff that I ate back in the 80s…