That’s disgusting!

This post is disgusting and icky and gross and shows some probably poor parental judgment though at the time it seemed ok.

Once there was a little a boy. He woke up on the last morning of his vacation with his “belwy hurtin”. His parents, reflecting on his high carb, no fruit diet of the last 2 days diagnosed constipation and sent him off to sit on the potty where their suspicions appeared to be confirmed. A box of (freaking expensive!) undiluted apple juice was procured. The boy drank it and in about 20 minutes was feeling ready to join his older brother at the waterpark.

The park was practically deserted at 9am on a Tuesday morning & the boy & his friends ran around enjoying the lack of lines. Then the boy can back to his parents saying his belly was hurting again. His father took him off to the bathrooms & his mom bought another ($1.50 for a little juice box!) box of undiluted apple juice. (The boy regularly drinks half water/half juice). The boy returned from the potty and chugged the juice.

Some of you dear readers probably know where this is headed. Your own child has possibly reacted to a huge load of sugar water on an empty stomach as this small boy is about to do. In his parents defense, the boy has never done so, nor has his brother.

The boy sat for a minute at the table (thank you god he was not in the water) of the (thank you god again) practically empty water park, then suddenly put his hand over his mouth and mumbled. “I gonna throw up” and then did so.

All over the ground of the mercifully nearly empty water park.

His father rushed him off to the bathrooms. His mom informed the nearby lifeguard who had seen it happen anyway. Management arrived with a bottle of disinfectant and the Unfortunate Low Man on the Totem Pole who had to clean up the mess. His mother waits and contemplates the fact that she always assumed she would be absolutely mortified if this happened, but yet here is has, and she isn’t. Oh, it is embarrassing, but not that much really. It’s more embarrassing to sit through her children's tae kwon class & listen to the teacher repeatedly ask them to stand still and pay attention.

The boy is cleaned up and left to sit quietly in a chair. His parents & their friends decide the incident was due to the sudden large intake of juice. The friends’ daughter does this fairly regularly, even when her stomach is feeling fine. “She’s a puker” her mom explains.

A half hour later the boy is clamoring to play MagiQuest, a game that involves running all over the hotel & appears fine. MQ is played, snacks are eaten (though hardly any by the boy), the car is loaded and the family heads home on a three hour drive.

Upon arriving home the parents find a couple hundred dead maggots on their bedroom carpet in front of the sliding glass door. 2 days later they still have no idea WTF that was about. There is nothing dead on either side of the door or in the ceiling for the maggots to have come from. Fortunately they had flea bombed the house before leaving so the carpet was poison & killed the maggots. The assumption is they crawled under the sliding glass door for some reason. It was incredibly disgusting, a 6 foot long, 2 foot wide strip of carpet covered in little dead white wormy looking things.

A couple hours later the boy & his older brother begged their parents to go to Chili’s for dinner. The boy had not said one word about his belly since that morning & had been successful on the potty. So the family goes to Chili’s. The boy has pizza and juice & again mentions his belly hurting. A trip to the potty seems to help. The plan was to then go to Wal Mart and pick up the Clone Trooper costumes the boys wanted before they sold out. (and sure enough WM only had one of each in the boys’ sizes so it was a good plan). The boy is happy & excited to get his costume. His parents, with stomach upsets on their minds & knowing they have none of the pink stomach stuff at home, grab some of the kids and adult versions of it, as well as the two costumes.

As they are walking toward the 20 Items or Less lines it happens again. The boy put his hand over his mouth, announced he was going to throw up and then did.

Twice.

On the floor of the Wal Mart by the 20 Item or Less check outs.

Everyone turns and looks. His father takes the boy to the bathroom where the boy is very upset that he threw up and everyone saw him do it.  His mother and older brother stand around the puddles waiting for Authority to show up trying to look nonchalant about it, though it makes them both queasy. And the mother again ponders on the fact that this really ought to be just mortifying, everyone staring at you, judging you, the mom who took her obviously sick kid to the Wal Mart and yet…again, compared to the regular tae kwon do humiliation, this is nothing. Once again Management and the Low Man appear to clean up the smelly mess.

The mom and older brother decide to go to the other end of the Wal Mart to check out. They get in the 10 Item & cigarette line. The man in front of her turns around, sees the Pepto in her hand and lets her go first. “So you can get the meds to the kid as soon as they come out of the bathroom”. The check out lately says the mother is lucky because the check out lady’s kids would never tell her when they were going to be sick & at least the mother had some warning.

Jeebus, they think, we are at the other end of the Wal Mart & everyone knows all about it!

Father & son come out of the bathroom, a Pepto chewable is given to the boy and nothing more is ever heard about his belly.

The parents discuss how this episode clearly shows their priorities. When the boy said he was going to throw up, the first thing they did was remove the costume (only one in the store in his size) from his hand so he wouldn’t throw up on it. They were hustling him toward the bathroom while doing it, but obviously the costume was the priority.