vomit | Zoo Koo

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.

I’ve been meaning to go to the market lanes in Central for some time now, to try and take some photographs. Seeing as how the kids have been on holiday, and we’ve been lying around the house like so many bumps on a log, and Andrew has been agitating to take photography lessons and also, buy a new camera, I thought it would be a nice mother/son excursion.

And, maybe provide some blog fodder.

I had visions of some photos of Andrew, avidly snapping away, his face intent on capturing a scene, or the light as it reflected off some fruit, and spinning a post out of the shared experience.

Alas, I had forgotten one small, but salient factor.

Andrew’s gag reflex.

Since he was very young, my middle child has had a very sensitive nose. Very. Sensitive.

That has been serendipitously (NOT) combined with a highly attuned gag reflex, to produce often spectacular results. And by spectacular, I mean, technicolor.

Once, a few years back, we were in CitySuper (high-end Japanese gourmet supermarket) all of us strolling through on a lovely day, relaxing and enjoying each other’s company while ogling all the high-end goodies on offer, all impressively packaged in that inimitable Japanese style.

Andrew, who must have been around 8 years old at the time, stopped short as he approached the seafood counter, where the goodies, for a change, were not wrapped.

He looked plaintively up to George, who was with him. I had wandered ahead with the two others and had already passed the seafood counter gauntlet.

“Dad, I can’t. We need to walk around the other way. I don’t like how it smells.”

George, contemplating a circuitous detour and clearly not fully comprehending the severity of the threat, took a gamble. ‘Come on, Andrew. It’s not very far – we’ll run really fast and be at the other end in no time.”

Andrew looked doubtful. But in the face of parental conviction, what to do?

George grabbed Andrew’s hand and made a run for it.

They had not even completed the approach to the counter, when Andrew’s olfactory sensitivity triggered his gag reflex and disaster struck.

George suddenly felt a tug as Andrew yanked his hand from his and stopped short.

An ominously thick-sounding splatter.

With a sense of dread, George looked back. There stood Andrew, presiding over the gigantic puddle of vomit much like I’d imagine Jackson Pollock would look commanding a massive canvas.

Only Andrew wasn’t quite so happy.

“See Dad?? I told you, I didn’t like the smell!”

Yeah. We get that now.

We alerted the CitySuper maintenance staff to Andrew’s little masterpiece, and guiltily slunk off, wondering if we should have offered to do the mopping.

Another time, when Andrew was younger, perhaps 5, we were buying groceries at our local supermarket. On the shopping list was pasta.

Located for your puking convenience by the fish counter.

Working our way through the aisles, and down the list, I stopped at the pasta section in order to compare prices and make my selections. I was concentrating, and not really focused on the kids, who were trailing behind me.

Suddenly, i felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up to see a Park ‘n Shop employee with a nonplussed expression on his face.

“Excuse me, ma’am, is this your boy?”

I peer around him and follow his pointing finger to a woebegone toddler Andrew, standing sheepishly in a puddle of his own throw-up.

When I say ‘standing in’ I mean, standing IN. Now, normally, when someone throws up, he (or she) will have the presence of mind to lean over, so that his (or her) vomit is deposited as far away from his/her body as is physically possible.

Call it self-preservation.

Not so, Andrew. Andrew had, out of a lack of experience, or immaturity, felt the urge to vomit and then simply opened his mouth up and let loose, without thinking to aim away. He had thrown up all down his shirt front and managed to direct the excess onto his sandalled feet. Vomit was pooling in the soles of his tiny little Tevas and squishing through his cute little baby toes.

I stared, open-mouthed, at my child.

‘Madam? Is this your boy?” the employee repeated.

I cannot tell you how absolutely, horrifyingly desperate I was to say “No.”

“Who? This child? Standing in his own vomit?”

“No, never seen him before in my life.”

Of course, I didn’t do that. I owned up to his parentage. Possibly because my father-in-law was also with us, and I had the feeling he’d have disapproved of me walking away, so with a resigned sigh, I gamely marched over to my now exceedingly messy son and started cleaning him up as best I could.

Not easy, for a mom who did not even have a packet of tissues in her handbag.

Luckily for me, the employee handed me a whole container of Wet Wipes, in the hopes of making us disappear as soon as possible.

You’ll be proud (or possibly, disgusted) to know that after we mopped Andrew up, we actually managed to finish our grocery shopping, before taking him home to hose him down.

All of that was a long time ago, however, so I thought nothing of suggesting that Andrew accompany me to Graham and Peel Streets, where the wet market stalls of Central are. I thought, what a great opportunity to bond with my son over a shared interest in photography.

It was not to be. We started at the bottom of Graham St, with the thought of working our way up, and then over to Peel. Not moments after we set foot on Graham, as I was just starting to unleash a volley of snaps did Andrew look at me and say, “Mom, I’m going to have a problem with the smell.”

Say it ain’t so.

I asked him to try. Surely, at nearly 13, things must be better. And really, it wasn’t that bad.

Mindful, however, of past experiences, I didn’t object when he hurriedly hiked up to the next cross street to wait for me, and gulp some fresh air.

In the end, our photography outing consisted of me trying to take photographs while Andrew sprinted up to the next street in order to breathe. Poor guy. Especially as there were some seriously cool looking displays of fish that I wanted to try and capture.

Luckily for both of us, there were no vomitous mishaps. And Andrew, was a great sport about it all.

For our next photography excursion, I think Andrew and I will need to go to an aromatherapy spa.

To make Andrew’s sacrifice all worthwhile, here are some photos from the day: