Good morning, good afternoon, good night! Whatever time or situation you may be in, I hope this article finds you well and in good health and spirits.
I just thought I'd brighten your day with one of my favorite stories from my childhood: one of the times my dad pulled a classic 'dad' move.
So a couple things to preface this story:
Number one, I love both of my parents very, very much. That being said, they did have me pretty young, so I do have plenty of stories of questionable decisions made by my parents for their small child while in their twenties. Example: my mom used to sometimes send me to church in overalls... I don't like to talk about it.
Two, I have a long history of getting ridiculously carsick in relatively short time spans. If you're ever in a car with me never make me read anything, don't make me keep turning around if I'm in the front seat, and don't make me sit in the middle seat. You've been warned.
Three, my dad has always been a hard worker so I spent most of my time with my mom when she would go to work, to church, to the supermarket, etc. Almost my entire childhood consists of mom and Milena at *insert place here* memories. A lot of these places were far from where we lived so we spent a lot of time in the car which I hated for already noted reasons. My mom and I had a system devised already. You know it's a serious problem when your mom keeps plastic bags tucked into the back of the passenger seat for you to throw up into should the occasion arise. So, if I were to say something I often said: "hey mom, I'm nauseous," she would make me grab a bag, open it in my lap, roll down the window a little crack to let in fresh air, give me some spearmint gum to chew, make me tilt my head back, close my eyes and take deep breaths. That usually worked.
When I was around seven or eight I was being babysat by a lady who lived in the same town as us. One night, we had to be at church for some reason and my mom was working near there so she told my dad to pick me up from the babysitter's and meet her at church.
My dad picks me up and everything is fine, but we hit traffic and if you've ever lived in or around the Greater Boston area you know what kind of pain the highway is during rush hour. What should've been half an hour ended up being much longer.
In an unsurprising turn of events, I turned to my dad and said: "hey dad, I'm nauseous."
He takes one look at me and goes:
"No you're not." I'm completely taken aback, and I proceeded to tell him that yes, I was in fact nauseous and my stomach felt really weird. He takes this opportunity to tell me that I'm just hungry because I had only eaten half of my peanut butter sandwich. I'm sure my mom is cringing all the way from Boston at this but his next suggestion to me was to eat my sandwich still in my lunchbox because it would make me feel better.
I'm thinking to myself: you know, that doesn't really sound like a good idea, and I think I know the difference between nausea and hunger, but you're the adult so okay.
I hadn't even finished my sandwich before I started throwing up.
I don't think I even was able to get the words "I'm going to throw up" out of my mouth before I turned my little head and puked all over the inside of my dad's car. That was when he started to panic. I was too busy throwing up to open the window so as he's trying to drive he's simultaneously opening the window so I can throw up outside the car. Sorry if this is a little graphic, but I was not a very tall human at this point in my life so I couldn't exactly stick my body out the window which meant I threw up all over the outside of the door too, as well as inside the little area where the window rolls into.
I'm sure the other people on the highway were looking at me throwing up out the window like "what in the world?"
About ten minutes later we got to the church where my mom was waiting in the parking lot. My dad throws open the door to reveal me—covered in vomit—along with the car. He goes:
"What am I supposed to do?" To which my mom just laughed.
I think we all learned a very valuable lesson that day.
