Note: This post is not for the faint of heart.
Pop Quiz:
Q1: What do Andrew and Usain Bolt have in common?
Q2: What does Andrew not have in common with Saddam Hussein? (Besides the fact that Saddam is dead. And had a mustache.)
Q3: In what way is Andrew a technical improvement on Linda Blair?
(Answers at end of post.)
Last night was witness to the genesis of family legend. At approximately 12:06 am, we were awakened by our bedroom door being unceremoniously flung open and Joey’s terse statement: “Andrew’s thrown up.”
Caught in a deep and dreamy stupor, I was slow to ascend to wakefulness. George reacted faster, immediately springing out of bed and going to investigate. At that point, I was tempted to turn over and go back to sleep, feeling justified by the well-known and universally acknowledged principle that after midnight, anything short of (and frequently, up to and including) a severed artery is the sole responsibility of the parent not canny enough to feign coma. However, and this is testimony to just the kind of caring and conscientious mother I am, I reluctantly dragged myself from bed to go see.
The stench of vomit hit me before I was even down the half-flight of stairs. Flinching from the impact, I continued, intrepidly down the steps, as George announced to me from Andrew’s doorway, “He launched off the top of his loft bed. It’s everywhere.” Joey stood in the hallway, gagging quietly.
As I rounded the corner to get my first glimpse into their room, I stopped short. Not even George’s statement “It’s everywhere” could prepare me for how Andrew had defied the laws of physics and the limitations of human anatomy. Of all the ways I could have hoped for Andrew to exceed our expectations, this would have been at the very bottom of the list.
Not even the film industry has dreamed up such a scene of utter carnage. Unimaginatively, Hollywood has only ever shown the forward propulsion of vomit, hence the term, projectile vomiting. Mr. Creosote of Monty Python fame, Lard-Ass from the famous blueberry pie eating contest in ‘Stand By Me’, Paul Rudd in ‘I Love You, Man’, all managed impressive distance and propulsive force — but only in one concentrated direction. But not even the best, most creatively and cinematically revolting minds in Hollywood have ever conceived of a 270 degree blast radius from a singular launch point. Not only that, he managed to shoot his barf to a distance of greater than 8 ft.
Dark puddles and speckles of vomit had been sprayed the entire span of the soft white woollen carpeting in the boys room, from Andrew’s loft bed in the far corner of the room, to the doorway. This must sound preposterous to you, because as I write this, I personally think it sounds ridiculous. But I swear, I am not exaggerating.
Like I said, Andrew Koo, exceeding expectations.
It was clear, even at first glance, that there was no way that the boys would be able to continue to sleep in that room last night. By now, Andrew has shut himself up in his bathroom to get cleaned up and George has gone downstairs to rouse an unlucky maid, and I step around Joey (who has now recovered enough to start cracking jokes, but not enough to venture back into the room), to collect their comforters off their beds, so they can sleep in our room. Joey asks me to collect his phone which is plugged in next to the futon that he was sleeping on — as I step into the room, attempting to avoid the dark speckles, I realize there is no clean bedding to be collected. (“Everywhere” means everywhere.) There is also no way to avoid stepping in vomit, as I plant my foot on what looks to be relatively unsullied surface only to pull away with it wet with gastric spume. This, on the corner of the futon at least 8 feet from where Andrew’s mouth must have been when his digestive tract blew. (The polo shirt Joey had laid out to wear the next day to school, on the far side of his futon was unwearable.)
I once wrote a blog post about Andrew as a toddler, not having the common sense to vomit away from his body, and managing to throw up so thoroughly upon himself at a Park N Shop that he ended up standing with his little baby Tevas having filled up with puke like wading pools.
Let me state for the record, this was NOT what I meant, when I said I wished Andrew knew how to throw up away from himself.
By now, George, Joey and I, punchy from being so rudely yanked out of sleep, are overwhelmed by the amplitude of what Andrew has achieved. None of us has ever seen anything remotely this impressive in the entire oeuvre of noteworthy feats of vomiting. We are convulsed in helpless laughter, even as we are fearful that Andrew will take offense at our cackling, but we cannot help ourselves. Joey does not help matters by throwing in one-liners as they occur to him.
“Andrew Koo, a one-man ‘Apocalypse Now’.
“I love the smell of vomit in the morning.”
“Oh my god, it’s like he set off an aerosolized bio-weapon in there.”
“There must be military applications to what he’s done here.”
“There’s nothing like being woken up by having someone vomit on your foot.”
Armed with a fusillade of disinfectants and carpet cleaners, Joycie valiantly sets about cleaning up the mess as I get the kids re-settled into their makeshift beds and make sure that Andrew has a bucket by the sofa, just in case. Joey is still throwing out his one-liners (“We need to register Andrew as a Lethal Weapon.”) when Joycie’s voice floats out of the boy’s room: “How many times have I told you boys to shut the closet doors!”
The implications of this sink in. Andrew has not only managed to disseminate the contents of his stomach across a seriously mind-blowing expanse of his room, he’s found a way to blow chunks over his and Joey’s entire wardrobe. He turned his entire room into a kill zone. Everything would need to be laundered.
This sets us off afresh and we are, by now, practically crying from laughter.
This morning, after a very truncated night’s sleep, we were still, bizarrely jazzed by the previous night’s incident. Joey was surprisingly good-natured about his rude awakening and the knock-on effects of Andrew’s gastric episode, probably because we are all still awe-struck by its impressive and unparalled magnitude. The stuff of legend.
He put it this way. “Imagine if Andrew had not puked straight ahead, but instead, leaned over his side rail and thrown up on me.”
Holy sh!t. Doesn’t even bear thinking about.
Pop Quiz Answers —
A1: They have both accomplished amazing feats previously considered physically impossible.
A2: Andrew actually has Weapons of Mass Destruction.
A3: Andrew doesn’t have to wind his head up.
P.S. Samantha would like everyone to know, she is responsible for the title of this post.
Zoo Koo 