Vomit, barf, puke, hurl
Lily, our kindergartner, had her first experience with vomit this week. Of course she has thrown up before, but not that she remembers.
"That's disgusting!'' she wailed while crying and looking down at her macaroni-and-cheese pile on the bathroom rug. (Apparently she did not chew her food, because the noodles were intact.)
She didn't even know to throw up into the toilet.
"Use the toilet!'' Bob urged.
She pulled her pants down and sat on the toilet.
"Do you have to go the bathroom?'' I asked. "No,'' she said.
I guess it's not a human instinct to regurgitate into the toilet. One has to learn these things.
Every time she threw up she cried in shock and horror as if she'd never heard of, seen or imagined one's dinner from the night before suddenly flying out of one's mouth, mixed with bile and acids.
All this provoked an interesting discussion about what terminology should be used to describe the act of blowing chunks. I told her it was called barf. Bob objected to this.
"It's puke,'' Lily told us.
I think that word is even grosser.
Vomit might very well be the word in the English language with the most synonyms. Here are a few:
upchuck
barf
vomit
hurl
ralph
purge
puke
hork
buick
spew
regurgitate
throw up
toss your cookies
lose your lunch
toss a sidewalk pizza
tango with the toilet
make modern art in the toilet
have a technicolor yawn
expunge the contents of your stomach
bare your guts to the world
become a multicolored organic fountain
revisit your breakfast
vomit your victuals
drive the porcelain bus
perform peristaltic pyrotechnics
paint the town red.. and green and orange and pink
have to say "that tasted better going down than coming up"
burp to the ninth power
make the janitor get out the ol’ sawdust bucket
find out just how acidic your stomach contents are
greet your guts
pray to the porcelain god
Those are from the Urban Dictionary.
Also, I believe that if you asked most parents, the only vomit they would ever consider touching in this world would be their own kids'. It's just one of those disgusting things you get used to doing when you have kids. Am I wrong?
Gretchen Day-Bryant has a son in high school and a daughter in middle school. She’s lived to tell about the struggles of juggling little kids and work.
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Brittany Wallman is the mother of Creed, 15, and Lily, 7, and is married to a journalist, Bob Norman. She covers Broward County government, which is filled with almost as much drama as the Norman household. Almost.
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