Today a small child threw up on my hands.

Not just on my hands, but in my hands. And my clothes. All of them.

My instinctive reaction when I heard the oh-so-familiar beginnings of a vomiting session was to hold out my hands to catch the digestive projectile. However, any parent will know the futility of this action. Why?

The volume of 2 Adult Hands <= volume of the contents of a small child’s stomach

Aside from circus folk who possess oddly shaped hands, the above formula holds water…but not sick, of course.

Your hands will successfully contain the contents of the first retch. But then there’s a pause. A beautiful gap where time appears to slow down, and clarity is reached. It must be similar to the gap that exists in between the ending of one thought and the beginning of another.

During this time, nothing can be done. You cannot move for fear of spilling the first successful  catch. You cannot comfort the poor urchin that is awaiting the next evacuation. All you can do is wait for it. And then, inevitably…

BLEEAUUUUGGGGHGHHHHH

It goes everywhere. It’s now all over me. All I can do is scream for help. A towel! Please anyone, a towel!

While I wait I realise how used I am to being the victim of such actions.  A child, my child I should add at this point, empties it’s stomach all over me, and really it’s nothing odd. Nothing compares to the time the same child top-ended the fecal content’s of its nappy over my tee-shirt (yes I’m calling the child ‘it’). If this ever happens to you, do not try to ‘rescue’ the tee-shirt. It will not work.

I also wonder if the very act of a parent catching it’s child sick has resulted in more than one culinary invention. For example, today’s vomity excursion produced mostly home made soup, with the odd bit of spaghetti thrown in. The spaghetti was from an earlier meal, but looked oddly appetising amidst the floating soup.

Is this how chicken noodle soup was invented? I think so.

Until next time.