it's all fun and games...

...until your boy barfs all over the interior of your beloved pickup truck.

Easter was great- wonderful to get together with my family. My oldest brother and his wife and kids were hosting- Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife, meself, and The Boy made the hour-long drive up north, and awesomeness definitely ensued. This was the first time I've been able to attend a modestly-sized family get-together in a long time... a couple of years, anyhow.
The Boy managed to ignore the pain in his still-gimpy foot and snuck away several times to goof off on the kids' trampoline that my brother keeps in his back yard- I say sneak away because he would alternate some time on the trampoline with periodic visits to check in with us and also to grab some sort of pastry or other junk food on his way out. Now, while Mr. Sweet tooth is a very fussy eater, he was like an ant on a sugar pile yesterday. Grab, run, grab, run. I should have said something, but he was having a blast with the other kids in the family, so I kept mum.

Oops.

About 15 minutes after we get on the highway, heading home, the boy turns to Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and mutters something in their language. I always kind of hate this, because I am excluded- they speak too fast together for me to catch more than a word or two. Anyhow, my wife sort of sighs, and says something back to The Boy, who suddenly goes bug-eyed, and proceeds to barf up everything he's eaten in the last 10-14 days... and it's not just a petite gutful of boy-barf, no... he's doing the Linda Blair Projectile-style bazooka barf. How a smallish 5-year old could ingest a a cake, two turkeys, a 40-acre field's worth of potatoes, two fishermen still in their boat and a partridge in a pear tree is beyond me. I swear there are peas rolling around in my truck still, and he hasn't eaten a pea in 2 months.

Now, the epilogue- beware if you're squeamish. So, I pull off the highway at the next exit and find a dunkin' donuts. The Mrs and The Boy head in, arm-in-arm, for a cleanup. The boy has recovered his spirits, minus a certain distaste for the pukey pants he's now sporting. I leap out of my truck, run around it a few times uttering muffled 'oh, gross, goddam...' you know, handling the situation maturely.

Luckily, my lazy ass has left a treasure trove under the seats- a roll of paper towels, rubber gloves (unnecessary, but welcomed), and a bottle of armor-all. I proceed to spend the next five minutes tidying, patting myself on the back for having opted out of the carpeted floors on my truck in favor of rubber. So, after a few minutes, my truck now smells like puke and armor-all, and the floors are glossy and shiny. Scotch-guarding the cloth seats will happen early this week, I'll tell you that much.
My wife and now hollowed-out son return to the truck to find me airing her out, calmly reading my book- all is well. I get a pained look from the boy, when he gets into my truck and can't stand up on the slippery floors- he proceeds to slip and slide for 30 seconds on the freshly armor-all'ed decks before sitting head-first in his chair. I am tempted to seat-belt him in as-is, but he might just start speaking in tongues, after what came out of him shortly beforehand, and, being short one old priest and one young priest, I get him buckled in, look at my wife, who is wrinkling her nose and saying '...smells no goud in here, hohney.' (apparently she doesn't like armor-all), and we proceed home. After a few minutes on the road, with me getting vibes that The Boy is hugely embarassed, I start goofing with him, breaking the ice a little. After telling me that he wasn't interested in a piece of half-cooked bacon with a side of warm mayonnaise, he began smiling a little as I offered him increasingly interesting dishes. He laughed out loud, finally, at the mention of a slice of fatty ham that I could rub around under the 'fridge for him, if he wanted, and he lost it at a 'dish of poo-poo and ice water.' The baby talk for bodily wastes absolutely sends boys into hysterics. My classy wife in the meanwhile was sinking bodily into her seat, mortified, but, by the time we got home, The Boy was in tearing spirits again, wet drawers and all.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go find someone to burn my truck.