2001-12-14 - 9:36 p.m.

When is the last time you threw up? Think about it. It's one of the most horrible and yucky feelings of your life. It's an excretion you can't control. Well, sometimes you really have to go to the bathroom, but you can hold your urine until you reach an appropriate, or at least private facility. Up-chuck resists all control. Sometimes, there isn't even a warning. It's almost embarressing how you can't control it. Whatever you have eaten that day, mixed in with vile fluids comes rushing out. Why can't the tongue be evolved to only tasting objects on the way down? Is this not important to the evolution of our species? Perhaps not. At least it would make life more pleasant.

I remember when we were little and we had the up-chucking illness, my parents would place the special bucket next to our beds and a towel draped down the side. I felt so terrible and I couldn't sleep because the threat was always there. I would imagine that I would get into the square up-chuck bucket (sans up-chuck) that was perfectly sized for me. I would swim away in the ocean.

My point is, that throwing up is such a small, yet terrifying points of our lives that we push it into the recesses of our minds until it happens to us again. I was willing to discard the throw up in my bucket that was so close and odorous, to come up with a simple dream to escape.

Wouldn't it be nice if other terrors and pains were like that? That we could pretend they never existed in ourselves or others. Until it happens. It passes. And it's gone.

John has the stomach flu. Please, oh, please I hope I don't get it! If I do, I guess I will forget about it.