There was a time in my life when I wasn’t squeamish. I could handle various sorts of slime and gore. My sophomore year in high school I watched a video on how to deliver a baby in an emergency and not once was there the suggestion to boil some water. The video must have been shot in the 60’s and was set in a dingy storeroom with a single, naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. No doubt the inspiration for the setting of every 70’s hostage situation on television. I also dissected a fetal pig that year without the slightest guilt or gagging. We got an extra hundred points if we could extract the brain from the skull with out severing the spinal cord. I got that hundred points, but only because I had the stomach to mash the spinal cord back together and it held up to my biology teacher’s inspection. As a counselor at church camp, a girl in my cabin threw up all over herself, the wall, and the girl on the bottom bunk. I cleaned her up and all of her spew without flinching.
Those days are gone.
Something as small as a booger is enough to make my tummy turn. As a teacher, there is no escaping them. I’m constantly facing all manner of mucus. When I worked with Pre-K, the other teachers read my signals of panic and revulsion and would come and rescue me from a child whose brain matter was dangling from his nose. I have the classic “snot-nosed” child in my classroom, bat-in-the-cave and a layer or two of dry, filthy crusting regularly adorns his nostrils. Last week, I couldn’t stand to look at it any longer and attempted to get it cleared with 3 or 4 tissues to keep it from touching me. I was not successful, but suddenly the kid was aware that he had a booger in his nose. I went for more tissues asking, “Do you think you can blow it out?” Without a moment’s hesitation, he blows and not only did the bat exit the cave but an unreasonable amount of gelatinous substance followed it to freedom. Seriously, I didn’t know that much mucus could come through a single nostril.
And then there’s regurgitation. I can’t even watch it on film anymore. Even worse, I get nauseous at the sight of the puking happy faces you can put in emails and instant messages. In fact, I’m getting sick now as I compose this post. As if to emphasize His sense of humor, God gave me employment as a behavior coach for a child with the most sensitive gag reflex in the history of the world. One of his favorite foods was one that also caused him to puke most frequently: scrambled eggs--which, by the way, go against the scent-taste connection. I like good scrambled eggs, but the sulfur-smell makes ME want to hurl. There was a morning that he started gagging and I was determined to get him to the bathroom because I couldn’t handle watching him ralph all over his tray again. As I was attempting to get his helmet off, his entire breakfast landed in my hand. How my breakfast didn’t also re-appear is a mystery. After that, his barfing all over his tray wasn’t so unbearable for me.
The best or worst, depending on your point of view, tale of projectile vomit came from one of my teaching assistants who has a two year old son. Once he was holding his infant son over his head and cooing at him when the darling one wretched . . . right into daddy’s mouth. Pardon me. I don’t feel so good.
