I should know better.

There are only two things that can make me hurl: Tequila and norovirus. Well, maybe chemo too, but I’ve yet to try that. As evidence, one time I was on a scuba boat in high waves off the coast of Cancun with about 20 other people; everyone had their head over the side blowing their groceries except the captain, and me. Even the two dive masters were busy up-chucking, yet my stomach didn’t have so much as a twinge. Hell, I could probably watch a Rosie O’Donnell sex tape and not puke, although it would still give me nightmares.

The rest of my family is not so lucky, as was evidenced by the happenings of last night.

It was 15 minutes until I had to take my son to karate class. He had been “playing” in the basement with his sister and I’d been practicing a new parenting tactic of ignoring their fights, not because I believed that it would decrease the amount of conflict between them, but that it would be better for my sanity if I just didn’t get involved unless blows were being exchanged, since my interference never helped stop the bickering anyway.

So, they were engaged in their usual sibling hostilities and I was ignoring the screams coming from the basement. Finally, I opened the door to tell my son it was time to get ready for karate and he yelled up the stairs in a hysterical wail, “She wiped a booger on me!”

“Whatever. Get your butt up here and get ready.”

“But… Hoo-wa… Hoo-wa… Hoo— BBBBWWWWAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!” My little boy did the call of the walrus right there on the stairs.

Well, fuck.

Who knew that the wiping of a booger would be enough to make someone puke? Admittedly, it wasn’t that much – only about five inches across and fairly clear, which was fortunate considering that the carpet is light-colored. Nothing like the time one of my air biscuits made him spew massive chunks all over the inside of my car. I determined that this was my daughter’s fault, since I considered the wiping of boogers to qualify as the use of biological weaponry, which is banned under the terms of the Geneva Protocol of 1925.

A punishment was in order: I told her she had to clean up her brother’s puke.

Can anyone out there guess how this plan might have gone sideways? Anyone?

Being that we had about ten minutes to get out the door for karate class I let my impatience influence me into making a bad decision. I gave my daughter some paper towels to get the first layer of chunks and a bowl of hot, soapy water to scrub up the rest.

She protested vociferously, saying that cleaning her brother’s puke would make her puke. I can’t understand why I didn’t listen. She can’t clean up reptard shit without gagging, so how could I expect her to clean someone else’s puke?

“Daddy! I can’t! It’s so gross!”

“Your choice is to either do it or you’ll be fined.” Yes, we levy financial penalties against kids for bad behavior.

“Okay,” she wimpered, and started to pick up the chunks with the paper towels. She didn’t even last three seconds before she ralphed up half the contents of her stomach and then started running for the bathroom to barf up the rest in what was turning into a pre-pubescent puke-fest. I was left standing there, stunned, reviewing today’s menu.

Today’s menu had involved chocolate; a lot of chocolate, by the look of things. My daughter had left a mass of brown hurl on the white carpet at least five times the size of what her brother deposited minutes earlier.

Double fuck.

I wish I could tell you I saw the humor in the situation and laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, but I did not. I didn’t completely blow a gasket, but I freaked out a little bit.

Then my wife called. Her plane had landed safely and she was on her way home. “I can’t talk right now,” I told her. “I’m dealing with a fucking Armageddon of kid puke here.”

“Is everyone okay?”

“Everyone except for me. Bye.”

My daughter had finished turning herself inside out in the bathroom sink (she hadn’t had time to lift the toilet seat, apparently) and I barked at her to rinse the sink out while I went and dealt with the environmental catastrophe downstairs.

I’ll spare you the details, but I did fast work and managed to get about 90% of it up inside of five minutes (cleaning puke is not an experience where one wishes to over-linger). Plus, I still had to get my son to his karate class. I could deal with the remnants later.

I came upstairs; my daughter was finishing the rinsing and I could tell that tears were imminent. At that point I started to feel like a heel. She was on her way to dinner at her best friend’s house and had been looking forward to it, and I didn’t want her to have this whole issue bringing her down so I gave her a hug and told her it was all okay and that I was sorry and should have listened to her, but please, no more booger wiping, okay?

That bit of damage control complete I gave both kids some gum to wash the puke taste out, hustled my daughter down the street to her friends, and the boy and I jumped in the van to head for karate, just a few minutes behind schedule.

I dropped my son off and started my evening run, and the sun came out for the first time in several days and my spirits began to lift. About half way into the run I was in the wide open spaces of Nose Hill Park and feeling good, and I realized that the whole situation had been pretty funny, even though I still did have some hardcore scrubbing to look forward to in order to get the stain out of the carpet. I actually started to laugh out loud while I was running, and it made me think about that old saying that writers have for when shit (or puke) happens:

It’s all material.

Author’s Note: I know I said that I wasn’t going to write about my kids’ personal lives anymore, but this was a story that simply had to be told so I made an exception. Also, I sought their permission beforehand, although my daughter required a bribe of a new chocolate bar to replace the one she’d failed to completely digest the day before.