throwin' up in my car

I have now officially thrown up in my car twice. I'm not counting when I was little and used to get carsick on my parents every half hour. Strangely, they were determined folk and continued to pack me into the backseat for long road trips around North America. I believe I owe my mother for that.

The first time happened two years ago on Christmas Day. I managed to get whooping cough, which is apparently a disease only found in the developing world. Oh yeah, and in me and the one person who I know got it from me (a colleague at work who wasn't so keen on me after that). Whooping cough was one of my favourite strange ailments. I learned that "whooping" actually means something: it's what one does when one is coughing so hard that it's impossible to breathe. Good times.

Christmas Day is non-negotiable in my family. The unspoken rule is that if I fail to show up at my parents' house, instant exile will result. So, while I was so ill that eating was an impossibility, I drank half a bottle of cough syrup and got in my car to drive out to the suburbs. To be fair, my father offered to come pick me up, but I'm a teensy bit stubborn and was certain I could make the half hour drive myself.

Halfway home, in a stretch of the high-speed route with no shoulder, I had a coughing fit so severe that I wound up vomiting in my left hand. Since I had been drinking Buckley's, my vomit was a purple, foamy mess, which made me want to throw up more. There was nowhere to pull over. I was driving at a high speed so I couldn't roll down my window and scrape it off my hand outside. The tissues in the backseat were too far to reach with my other hand. And I was driving standard. I drove all the way to my parents' house with one hand full of purple vomit.

The second time happened yesterday morning. I was driving back into the city after visiting my parents (do you sense a pattern?). A car cut in front of me in the middle lane and swung over to the left lane at a ridiculous speed. Shortly after, with a huge bang, the same car smashed into the back of a tractor trailer about six or seven car lengths in front of me. From my vantage point, the only possibility was instant decapitation. A wave of nausea hit me and I pulled the car over (this time there was a shoulder), jumped to the passenger side and threw up out the door onto the side of the road.

Three times won't be a charm.

RainyBow