I am pleased to state that, to the best of my recollection I have never puked in public. My digestive equipment seems to be constructed primarily of cast iron.
I have, however…oh, never mind…
suffice it to say the cast iron construction does not extend to the bladder…
I had a phenomenal spinach salad for dinner, at a nice restaurant with my parents, in Charlottetown. I started feeling iffy after dinner, and excused myself for some air. Air did not help. A little walking around did not help. We headed for the car to go to a nearby convenience store to pick up some ginger ale. I must look really bad, because the parking attendant asks if I’m doing OK. My dad asks where the hospital is, because he believes I’m beginning appendicitis or something. We drive towards the dep, and after about two turns I can’t take it any more. Stopped at a stop sign, I leap from the car in a single bound and start yakking into the bag I have clutched between my hands.
On the steps of the local Baptist church.
I must say that crouching on the steps of a Baptist church, in the pouring rain, in a strange city, vomiting your guts out while your father stands beside you and gingerly hands you some water to rinse out your mouth–it’s a very special experience.
This is also how I found out I was intolerant of spinach.
This story takes place in around 1970, long before mandatory seat belt laws, and laws regarding kids being strapped into a car seat. The days when, in a station wagon, adults got the seats, and kids were stuffed in the back.
About four or five kids in the back of this station wagon. Me, and some cousins. Adults are occupying all of the seats. The car is happily barreling down the expressway, my uncle is driving, and one of his kids (my cousin) shouts out suddenly, “Daddy, I’m going to be sick!”
Uncle doesn’t miss a beat. He hits the “lower tailgate glass” button on the dashboard, and hollers,“Okay, Sweetie, let it go out the back.” She leans over the tailgate, and hurls all over the expressway. At about 60 mph.
It got rid of the tailgater, anyway.
Once as a kid our family was visiting the grandparents, and several of my aunts/uncles/cousins joined us for dinner. Shortly after, I felt queasy. Mom went to get some Pepto-bismol. She poured me a spoonful and like she always did, she absentmindedly scraped the spoon against the rim of the bottle to catch the drip. Unfortunately this was a well-used bottle and the rim was encrusted with dried up Pepto, causing little flakes of it to fall onto the spoon. I noticed this just as she shoved it into my mouth and I projectile vomited all over her, the floor, myself, and managed to get some on the couch too. That really brought the conversation to a halt.
Best ever happened to a “friend” of mine. (We met online and came for a visit - she turned out to be psycho.) I was showing her around San Francisco and she had some kind of seafood chowder for lunch, after which we did quite a bit of walking, which I assume she wasn’t used to. We catch the commuter train back to the suburbs, managing to hit rush hour and our car is jam-packed. We’re hurtling along, the train rocking back and forth, and I see her start to make that “blurp, blurp” face and I think “OH NO!” Sure enough she unloads all over this woman in a very expensive-looking suit holding a very expensive-looking iPod. We were mortified and had to spend the rest of the ride home warning people of the vomit.
I have three good stories but this is what I think is the best.
My best friend lives in MD and he had an extra ticket to a concert in Northern Va. It was to see Velvet Revolver and some other acts. I was excited to go and the fast I wasn’t feeling 100% had me unconcerned.
So I headed from NJ to MD. In DE just past the toll plaza on 95 after the Christiana Mall exit I was doing 70 in the left lane. I started feeling unwell and pulled into the right shoulder and upon starting to open the door I puked. Some went on the door but most went onto the highway.
I then drove an hour until I stopped for something to clean my car. I had my window down to mitigate the smell but because it was cold my heater was on.
At my fiends house I told him what happened. He was concerned and told me I could stay behind if I wanted to. I told him I felt fine and he drove to the concert with his GF in front and I in the back.
On the way I started feeling queazy but with deep breaths I was fine. We get to the venue and just as I pass a security person I puke on the grass. He asks me if I’m ok and I say nonchalantly I must have the flu then kept walking.
The show was worth it.
Lecture hall, college.
Went from feeling fine to yakking all over the poor schmuck in front of me in a nanosecond.
This was followed by leaving a trail of vomit from my seat to the exit (I was three rows from the front in a 100-plus seat hall), whereupon I unloaded whatever was left in my stomach - or ever thought about BEING in my stomach - into the outside flower bed in full view of anyone and everyone who happened to be walking by at the time.
Most. Embarrassing. Experience. Ever.
Turned out to be the worst case of flu I’ve ever had. In the mid-70s when this happened, I think it was Swine Flu. Ten days of utter hell on earth.
Back in college, a friend of ours met us late at a bar where a band was playing on stage. We were at a table up near the front and for some reason our friend felt compelled to chug several beers from the pitcher to catch up with us. So a couple of minutes later I’m looking more to my right towards the band and all of a sudden I see this thin, ropy stream of fluid go shooting past me towards the stage. I look left and there’s Doug with his hand hard pressed to his lips and a look of brutal horror on his face. He’d tried to hold back a surprise puke and between his pursed lips and two fingers had created this perfect, slender stream of spew.
Suddenly, realizing more was on the way, he reached over, grabbed the pitcher, poured the rest of its contents on the table and started barfing heavily into it. I turned, looked around the crowded room to gauge the general public’s reaction to the intestinal theatrics and reallized that yeah, pretty much everyone was focused on Doug’s vomit and, by extension, us. Finished refilling the pitcher, Doug then returned it to the center of the table, lifted his mug, exclaimed “Second wind!” and quaffed its contents. To their credit the band never missed a beat, this despite the Smells Like Teen Spew performance nearby.
There was this kid once, nicknamed Lardass Hogan…
My story is similar to minor7flat5’s. I live in Ohio and was visiting my friends in Delaware. Sunday morning, time to drive home to be at work Monday morning. Incipient migraine worsened as I drove, and a 7-hour trip ended up taking about 14 as I pulled over to puke probably 40 times alongside the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I should have checked into a hotel, but I was too single-minded to get home.
When I pulled into my driveway I got out of my car and left the door open, went into the house and left the front door wide open, crawled upstairs and passed out fully clothed. Woke up the next morning and went to work. Amazing my car battery wasn’t dead with the light having been on all night. This was before I could get a doctor to actually diagnose me with migraines, so I didn’t have any medicine to take.
Fast forward a couple of years, and I may have seen you. I was walking on Mission street, around 21st/22nd. Homeless alkie walking down the street maybe 50 feet in front of me, taking pulls from his pint-size bag. At one point he paused for about a second, hurled in the middle of the sidewalk, wiped his mouth, and took another pull.
Not to imply that you’d do that 
Joe
I see what you did there.
Then there was the time when I ate a Big Mac for breakfast on the way to Canada’s Wonderland on a hot, sunny day. My then-boyfriend ditched my underage self to go drinkin’ in the beer garden with his buddies and the heat and sun got to me and I hurled the aforementioned Big Mac up behind a bush.
Caught the flu. The old fashioned kind of wheeze flu, not the kind you get from leaving the tuna salad out too long. I went to work feeling fine and came out of work coughing so hard that I puked all over the bus stop while people stared in horror and backed away.
My bachelor party.
We first had a beer or two at my brother’s house. Then we went to a burger joint and had a few more beers. Then we went bowling and had some beers and some shots.
And all that was fine. We were just having a good time and about ready to go off to the strip clubs.
And I ordered a chocolate martini.
I have no idea why I ordered a chocolate martini. I have no idea why my friends let me order a chocolate martini. I have no idea why I was allowed to drink a chocolate martini or even why a chocolate martini as a creation even exists. But I finished it, got in the limo, and my entire world started spinning around. There was a slap fight for dominance in my stomach and it was a miracle I could keep everything under control for the entire ride out to the clubs.
We got the Bazookas, paid our cover, and sat down. And then I stood up. And then I ran for the bathroom. And then I lost it. Lost it in two different sinks. Lost it in the bathroom toilet.
I was there for hours. HOURS. I couldn’t move. I just crouched there dry heaving until it hurt. I think a bouncer eventually cleaned up the sink while I was in the stall. I could hear some of the girls yelling “oh my god!” after opening the door, no doubt after being told they absolutely could not go in the men’s room and that got their curiousity piqued.
The awesome part was that I was supposed to spend the night at my brother’s but they brought the limo back to my house at 2 in the morning. There I was, still drunk, covered in crusted and soggy puke, and they all opened the door and pushed me inside to my loving financee’s waiting arms. I crawled into bed muttering “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Then I got up the next morning for a pre-wedding family brunch.
Goddamned chocolate martini.
Yeah, those three words start about 95% of my puking stories. But few of those are interesting or public–by the time I start puking I’m already unable to move usually.
The first time my sister came to London to visit with me, she decided she had to try out this unfamiliar Chinese restaurant that I’d never heard of and eat large quantities of seafood. At the tube station, she started turning green and started looking for a garbage can…it was only then, to her horror, that she remembered that all of the cans were welded shut to prevent them from being receptacles for terrorist devices. She tried to make it to the platform edge to spew onto the tracks but didn’t make it. It was a long way back to her hotel.
At Oxford my ex and I were heading towards a local restaurant to meet up with friends. Suddenly a very drunken man came running across the road just in front of us, threw up while still running, and continued right into a pub without stopping. Almost in the same motion he was hauled right back out by the bouncer at the front door.
One of my rugby teams used to have puking contests that usually had me leaving early (as much as I loved playing rugby, I don’t drink, and I don’t enjoy puking, being around puking people, or being around drunk people). The key to it was for one of them to drink out of the pitcher, and then refill it with emanations from his body (snot, spit, piss, shit, and inevitably, puke), and pass the pitcher to the next guy for him to drink from. Once a few of them had their turns, most of the others would already be puking on each other just from watching the consumption of the pitcher’s contents. This re-use and recycle approach kept beer costs down, but resulted in a lot of bannings. BTW, the player who first began the practice of consuming other persons’ shit is now a school teacher. I fear for the future of humanity.
I have only puked in public once and that was in First Grade. I had the flu and didn’t know to ask to stay home from school. (I was 6! That was an option? Nobody mentioned it…) All I really remember of the incident is not even having enough time to raise my hand and ask the teacher if I could be excused. My memory is something like this: "Uh-oh, I think I have to ::BLORT: " Oops. I puked all over the desk of the kid sitting next to me. I remember him crying out, “EWWWWWWWW!” and then my teacher shuffling me off to the nurse’s office.
But I came to this thread today to share with you this story, wherein I was not the puker, but still an active participant in the festivities.
So a co-worker invites me to happy hour at this tiny little restaurant/micro-winery. It’s a very classy place, only about 8 tables, with a huge extensive and did I mention expensive wine list. Co-worker, H, brings her friend, S. Coworker H is a very good drinker. She has a two-bottle minimum policy for pretty much everything. She can down two bottles of wine and still be upright – drunk, slurring, and staggering, but still walking and talking. She’s a fun drunk. Her friend, S… not so much.
By the time I got there, H & S were already deep into their first bottle of wine and had already ordered their second. I ordered one glass of wine and an appetizer. They thought food might be a good idea, so they ordered a couple appetizers. Three other people show up and each orders a drink and an appetizer – we all share all the appetizers, but S and H are the only two drinking bottles of wine. Somewhere near the end of the second bottle and midway through their third, S, gets really quiet and puts her head down on the table. She is trapped between the wall and the table. I am sitting next to her. I glance over at S and then look pointedly at H and say, “I think she’s done. You’d better get her out of here.” H agrees with me and we start making noises like we’re moving the party elsewhere so H can get S loaded up into a car and sent home.
Right about the time we made the decision to vamoose, S raises her head and stands up, pushing away from the table. She takes about two steps, which lands her standing directly behind me. She’s desperately clinging to the back of my bar stool for balance. I am now sitting at Ground Zero and am trapped between my bar stool and the table. I was just thinking, “Oh shit, this is not going to turn out well,” when I heard this quiet little “urp!” bubble up from S’s throat behind me. I realize I have less than 0.05 seconds to get myself clear (and I’m only on my second glass of wine, so I’m still pretty sober), but there’s really nowhere to go. I push back with my feet right about the time that poor S unleashes a projectile fury of almost a whole bottle of red wine and IIRC, some sort of mediterranean pizza thing… right down my back, all over my leather jacket that was hanging on the back of my bar stool.
Of course, the smell was horrible and all of the staff behind the bar scattered and disappeared into the night. The other patrons/diners/customers all classily acted like someone didn’t just puke a bottle of wine right in the middle of the swanky dining room. H jumps up and grabs S to drag her into the bathroom. She later told me that S puked again (all down H’s leg) on the way, and then unloaded a few more bottles in the bathroom stall. Meanwhile, the rest of us call for the check, grab whatever napkins we can get our hands on and proceed to at least start mopping up some of the worst of the mess. Service industry professionals will be glad to know that we tipped about 50% of the bill, which came to a couple hundred bucks for all six of us.
While my friends are mopping puke off the table, I’m standing there paralyzed. I had jumped forward to get away from the wine puke deluge, but not far enough and not in time. The guys are standing there chuckling at our embarrassment and the one I liked at the time made eye contact with me. I whispered, “Dude. There is wine puke dripping down the crack of my ass. I have to get out of here!” More hilarity ensued. I threw my jacket on, which pressed all the wine puke up against my skin, and left. We had agreed to meet up at one of the guys’ house later. I went home and immediately began soaking my sweater in cold water, took a really long, hot shower, got dressed, found a different jacket to wear, and went back out to party. Later, that guy and I closed down our friend’s house and went to the bar around 1 a.m. and kept right on drinking, no worse for the wear. I got the Party Trooper And General Good Sport award for the night.
And yes, S, did reimburse me for dry cleaning the leather jacket, which cost about $45 and took about three weeks. I’d owned it for about a month. It came back as pristine as ever, puke smell completely gone.
And no, I have *still *not been back to that restaurant. I think this happened around December 2008.
I have a few stories (puked at work once or twice, a drunkenpuking, etc etc, ) but the most memorable was one Chinese New Year when I was about 8 or 9, a (single!) friend of my parents had taken us out to a fairly nice Chinese restaurant called the House of Hunan. I remember that I felt tired and my head felt heavy, so I was laying with my head in my Mom’s lap. When the food came, she gently urged me to sit up and eat. I may have managed a couple bites, then promptly blew chunks all over the floor, in Mom’s purse, and IIRC, pretty close to the shoes of the waiter. Mom packed up my food to go, profusely apologized to their friend, and took me home.
We didn’t go back to that place for a long long long time, and Mom & Dad’s friend eventually married, but afaik, never had any kids!
I like to think I have a sense of humor that appreciates sublety and sophistication.
But these stories here have made me laugh until, literally, tears are coming from my eyes. I’m at the computer in the library and I’m having to try and keep quiet. It’s a struggle.
Bwhaaa… “Get outta here… This ain’t Cambridge!”
Luckily, I’m not a puker so no public puking stories for me.