December 16, 2005

Cube Barfing

This was written by a friend of mine at work, It’s his story. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Seriously, this wasn’t me…

Hey, did you ever puke at work? I don't mean in the bathroom, I mean at your desk.

I just did; but I only paused for a couple minutes to clean up, seal the plastic bag liner of my trash can, and wipe the sweat off my forehead. Now I'm working as productively as ever. However, I felt the need to share the moment with someone, so I'm taking a quick break to let you know about it.

It was a rapid nausea incident. The nausea came and went extremely fast as I was finishing lunch (chicken soup, pretzels, and a small plain salad - never did get to the Clementine oranges). I noticed a very light nausea for a good part of the late morning, but nothing to cause distress ( I have a cold, no fever). I rapidly ate my soup, drinking the last third instead of painstakingly spooning it out. The soup consumption was interspersed with some pretzel dunking and munching and a couple picks at the salad. After the soup, I may have had a slight pause due to a brief intestinal roiling, but it seemed to settle and I turned my attention to the remaining pretzels. While chewing up a couple of good salty ones, my mouth suddenly went desert dry and a powerful nausea reminiscent of greasy food, too much malt liquor beer, and a couple spins on the Zipper seized me with a fearsome strength.

I steeled my will and grappled with him. I wanted to spit the pretzels out, but the very idea seemed to loose my tenuous hold on my stomach contents so I'd stop - afraid to move - afraid to puke with a mouthful of partially chewed pretzels. I gently bobbed back and forth between these two ideas for a couple seconds then stilled. Ever so gingerly I eased my trash can (thankfully containing a plastic liner) out into a strategic position. I still believed I'd be victorious, but better safe than sorry. My stillness gave me a slight advantage as I felt the nausea loosen its grip a bit.

Steady…steady… you can't puke at your desk at work…steady…it'll pass.
Maybe my will flickered for a moment or the demon inside was just toying with me, not showing his true strength - I'll never know for sure. But the nausea came on a sudden. My eyes went wide with the realization that I was going to puke at work.

How many people would notice? I'm rather famous in my own home for the roaring spews I visit upon our commodes once or twice a year. It seems my body resists barfing as if I was throwing out organs. This contention has been known to generate deafening wretches that too the uninitiated would surely sound like murder with a dull knife.

Bathrooms are way too far. Even standing would tip the scales the wrong way. Only me and my trash-can in the universe.

Relax…don't fight it…nice and quite

Suddenly a thick burp! Nausea rapidly receding! At last minute pardon! Then in a moment, my house of cards crashed again. Freight train a comin'.

Shoot…score.. Only a cup or so...Not to loud - good job.. Mike - wearing earphones, excellent...Jody, out at lunch - super...Jane, on vacation - ka-ching...Gail is too polite to step out of her cube - acceptable. The freight train is gone. Back to work.


Posted by Clancy at 3:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 15, 2005