Why Can’t I Make Myself Throw Up?

On Friday, I went out to a “surprise” birthday party with a fellow CTLC teacher and some teachers from her school.  It wasn’t really a surprise, since the teachers told her about it in advance and urged her to invite her friends.  We went to one of her favorite Chinese restaurants and ordered a whole spread of traditional Chinese food.  Yum!

When Chinese fish is prepared, it is very unlike fish preparation in America.  The eyeballs are left in, it is whole, and the scales are not removed. The effect is somewhat off-putting, but it’s delicious nonetheless.  In my excitement and hunger, I accidentally swallowed a fish bone.  It was lodged pretty deep in my throat and was still there when I got home.

Mike did some research for me and told me that it’s recommended that you eat some bread.  OK, sounds good… except for the fact that I don’t have any bread.  The closest thing I have is waffle mix.  So naturally, after I previously gorged myself on Chinese food, I whipped up a waffle and put some chocolate peanut-butter on it.  Mmm.  To try to help force the bone down, I barely chewed the waffle, essentially swallowing it whole.  All this effort and still the bone remained.

We then decided that it would be a good idea to make myself throw up.  I haven’t thrown up since 2006, when I had a horrible migraine and I threw up kettle corn into the sink (I couldn’t even make it to the toilet).  I couldn’t eat kettle corn for years after that.

After about an hour of shoving my finger onto the back of my tongue, pathetic gagging, spitting up, Mike rubbing my back, and me yelling at myself to do it, I just couldn’t do it.  The best I could do was gag the bone up a little higher in my throat, just below my jowls.  Jowls.  Is that the right word?

On a completely different note, while I was waiting for the metro the other day, I decided to sit down against the pillar.  Bad idea.  Really bad idea.  I felt something wet against my folded leg, so naturally I assumed that the roof was leaking. I looked up and saw no leaks.  I looked down and saw a loogie.  Yes, a loogie.  Most of it was smeared against my thigh and the remaining amount was stuck on the side of the pillar.  I know that it was a loogie and not just spit because the consistency was thick and somewhat chunky.