Today I was doing laundry and for some reason I sniffed the bath towels. Okay, fine. It was because I was wondering how dirty they were. When I sniffed them I had a weird childhood flashback. I thought of vomit. Here’s why:
When I was a young WG I had issues with nausea. I woke up nauseous and everything I looked at made me gag. Of course traditionally barf-inducing things were triggers like dog poo, dead bugs and barf itself. But then there were other things like this poster my parents had hanging up of a Spanish bull rider, the painted ceilings at Moody mansion in Galveston…come to think of it, art in general made me nauseous.
The good side of having an overactive gag reflex is that you get out of gross chores like cleaning the cat’s litter box.
The bad side is that you could potentially throw up in embarrassing places like, let’s say, the school bus stop when you’re 12 years old. Perhaps when someone who calls himself “The Brettster” tells a story about a kid who always has snot running down his nose and that his dad also had snot running down his nose…like maybe something like that could make you puke all over the other kids’ back packs.
Hey, I said “potentially.”
Anyway, I didn’t actually spew chunks that often. It was more the nauseous issue most of the time. But if I did get sick it wasn’t because I was actually ill; I just got grossed out. But just in case it should happen again while I was at school, my mom sent me on my way with a little protection—a bath towel. If I were to feel nauseous again and I couldn’t make it to the bathroom, I was to let it out on the towel. So I would seriously carry that towel around school with me. I remember even walking into the cafeteria with it one day and some kid (probably the Brettster, he was always on my back), saying, “Why are you carrying that towel around?” Oh, and I might add, it’s not like she gave me the best towel. Natch, it was an old ratty towel since chances were I was going to destroy it anyway.
So on those days when I would start to feel nauseous, I would put the towel over my mouth and breathe deeply. It seemed to help.
That’s why whenever I smell bath towels I feel nauseous. And now (as Paul Harvey would say), you know…the rest of the story.
And if that story made you a little bit queasy, you might want to grab a towel.
4 comments:
Epilogue: I went to my sister's apartment this past weekend and saw that she had the bull riding poster up on her wall! I said, "That thing always made me gag!" And did I mention that it was hanging in the kitchen when I was a kid? And my parents wonder why I wouldn't eat anything!
What wall did she have it on? And now I know why when you walked Jaxx and Katie that you didn't do the clean up, which was fine.
Now I know why you can't watch TV and eat at the same time.... your overly-sensitive gag reflex. Of COURSE people beating each other up on Maury Povich or Oprah talking about sick people would make you vom. Misee.
She had it in the living room. It doesn't gross me out now but I can't watch Heroes and eat. It's too science-fictiony.
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