The 'No Hurl Guarantee'

As I set to work cleaning up the holiday explosion that descended upon our household (-yes steam cleaning is in order), I am remembering what my good friend and I had an epic laugh over yesterday: an incident from Christmas past that made me decide to post that story here.  It's all about vomit.  You've been warned.  You're welcome.

As a teenager, my friend and I came up with many ways to communicate in our own sort of short hand.  We could utter the word 'Dude' with different voice inflections and completely understand one another perfectly.  We had our own little language going without much effort at all.  We just got each other.  Still do to this day.  This was before most people had cell phones, so I guess this was our version of text messaging.

At one point, while at a local fair enjoying the rides, my friend and I had the fortune of getting to stay on the zipper ride for six consecutive turns. 

Photo credit:  sodahead.com

There was no line and the guy running it thought it was pretty funny to watch us keep screaming.  It was great but there did come a point when we weren't feeling quite so fabulous.  It was then that the term, 'no hurl guarantee' was coined.  My friend turned to me and let me know that although she was ready to be done with this ride, she could still give me the 'no hurl guarantee'.  We did make it off the ride without losing our lunch and went home for a few hours to rest, only to return to the fair to ride some more later that night and never did get sick over it.  

Cut to December 26th, 2004.  Of course my friend and I are still enjoying our own little world in so many ways and we keep our party goin' for at least another day after Christmas so as to avoid that whole Christmas letdown and all.  Plus we really dig getting discounted goods like wrapping paper, cards, decorations, etc. on the cheap so we can open up the stuff next year and be all 'ooooh look at all this pretty stuff I got last year- wasn't I clever?'  And nobody will even know it's last years stuff....

Anyway, we're out on our annual day after Christmas shopping and we do our usual thing by indulging in a trip to a buffet restaurant for a midday break.  Now here is where I should let you in on the fact that my friend and I love the IDEA of a buffet.  But neither one of us is particularly good at pacing ourselves and getting our money's worth at these establishments.  Still, we do it every so often and manage whatever damage we can with eyes that are bigger than our stomachs.

So y'all have been forewarned that this story has something to do with vomit.  You can kind of see the writing on the wall.  But wait, it's better than that...

My friend and I get done with our lunch and prepare to move on to round two of our shopping extravaganza.  This is the point where we start to hit up the smaller shops to find some truly unique stuff.  This is where I should let you in on a few key details: this particular year we had brought along my friends mother for the first time,  the place we go for our special shopping day is about an hour and a half north of where we live- where there are much smaller crowds and usually more leftover stuff to chose from, we are traveling in my brand new car.

So... we all pile back into the car to commence shopping.  We all have VERY full stomachs.  We don't make it more than a few blocks down the road before my friend declares that she is not feeling well and CANNOT issue the 'no hurl guarantee'.  I KNOW what this means.  And I am scrambling like mad to get her somewhere that she can get OUT of the car.  But there is a problem.  We are in the middle of a four lane highway in a double left turn lane when this unfortunate moment arrives.  My friend is in the back seat.  I hear her desperately emptying out a plastic shopping bag.  The next thing I know, my friend is indeed hurling into said shopping bag.  You'd think it couldn't get much worse, but nooooo...this is the point where all hell breaks loose.  Just as my friend commences with loosing it, I am able to make the left turn into a parking lot.    BUT, there's an old guy with a walker going across the parking lot right in front of us so I can't get out of the way and into a space to stop all this action as fast as I would like to.  AND this is also when I get to find out that if my friends mom is around someone who loses their lunch, she loses hers too.  Cue both my friend and her mom jumping out of the vehicle as I pull into the first available spot.  This is just the moment when my friend also realizes something very bad and cries out in a forlorn voice that there is 'a HOLE  in it!'- meaning her bag that she used to be sick in is defective and has resulted in a complete failure of her attempt to keep herself and my new car clean.  This is also the moment when I realize that I have apparently inadvertently cut some other driver off from the parking space that we are now occupying.  And that person is mad and yelling at me, until they actually SEE the spectacle that is going on and proceed to also get sick themselves in a nearby garden.  NO, I AM NOT FRIGGING KIDDING, HERE! 

Yes, there is a lot of upholstery cleaner, a new outfit, and so much other ridiculousness that follows but I won't bore you or make you sicker with those details.  Let's just say that nobody can ever claim that I myself cannot give the 'no hurl guarantee' as I'm about the only one who didn't lose it that day.  But I HAVE had so many literally painful belly laughs over this incident that have contributed to the strength of my super strong stomach.