I don’t travel well. I love to be in different countries and places, experiencing adventures and exotic foods that I could not have tried from home, but I don’t actually like the process of going anywhere. For some reason my stomach seems to rebel whenever I board any form of transportation that moves independently of my feet.
I get motion sick remarkably easily. I have barfed on boats, coughed up in cars, tossed my lunch on a train, and even managed to hurl in a helicopter. In fact, the only mode of transportation that I don’t recall vomited in, on, or out of is an airplane. I am not altogether certain how I have avoided that scenario given my other travel experiences. The only explanation I can come up with is that along with my susceptibility to motion sickness, I am also quite claustrophobic. And perhaps the terror of travelling in a tiny metal tube at thirty thousand feet trumps a queasy tummy.
Whatever the reason, I don’t really mind flying. Other than the absolute certainty that five minutes after I board the aircraft I am going to suffocate and likely be crushed by the walls of the plane as they close in on me of course. Other than that, it’s all good.
Cars, however, are my true nemesis.
I recall as a child, I got car sick anytime my family drove more than fifteen minutes in any direction. Sitting in the backseat, I would watch the scenery flash by the side of the car for a few minutes, then I would ask my parents if we were going to stop soon. My mom always asked the same question: “Do you need to pee, or throw up?”
She knew I was going to throw up, it was no great secret, but I guess she was trying to afford me some small amount of dignity by blaming my request on my bladder. Usually, however, I would be honest and say my stomach hurt and I needed to get out of the car. They didn’t stop. They never stopped. Instead, my mom would rummage through her purse, pull out a plastic garbage bag, and hand it back to me. She would tell me that we were only gong to be on the road for a few more minutes and I should try to close my eyes and sleep. She knew as well as I did that before we got anywhere close to our destination I was going to be filling that bag with the contents of my stomach.
I have a vivid recollection of one particular camping trip when I was about twelve years old. We packed up the car to drive home on a Sunday after spending the weekend by a small lake in Sonora, California. My dad decided that we should eat before we drove home, so he made grilled cheese sandwiches for us. I’m sure you can already see where this is going. Because I was twelve, and had the attention span of a gnat, I didn’t think about the drive home and I happily inhaled the sandwich he had prepared for me.
We climbed into the car, and we had not driven more than five miles from our camping site when I realized my mistake. In an effort to hold off the inevitable climax, I lay down across the back seat of the car, closed my eyes and tried to make myself go to sleep. (This was in the 1970’s when cars were bigger than houses, and parents did not seem to care about such pointless concerns as whether or not their child was wearing a seatbelt. So, no, I did not have my seatbelt on, and yes, there was enough room for me to lay stretched out across the back seat.)
I think I did actually manage to fall asleep, because I don’t recall most of the two-hour drive home. I believe I slipped into some sort of nauseated coma that kept me right on the edge of, but not quite, throwing up. I was sweating and having lucid fever dreams of being turned inside out and my head exploding to make room for the cats fighting in my chest as they struggled to climb up and out of my body.
My next clear memory was of my dad exiting the freeway and slamming on the brakes at a red light. I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was a red light, but it is altogether possible he just stomped on the brakes to see if he could get me to fall into the floorboards.
Which I did.
I climbed back up into the seat and hurriedly grabbed the little handle on the inside of the car door that would enable me to roll down the window. But it was futile. My stomach had already been pushed past the point of no return.
For reasons known only to my deepest subconscious mind, I continued to aim for the still-closed window and proceeded to paint the insides of my parents’ vehicle with the contents of my own insides. I can attest first hand that a grilled cheese sandwich does not look nearly as appetizing the second time you see it.
I finally managed to roll down the window, trying to clean up the mess, but only succeeded in squeegeeing the debris off the glass and causing it to slough down the inside panel of the car door. Realizing I was not actually helping the situation, I rolled the window back up. It was streaked and completely opaque with bodily fluids. I started to roll it down a second time – I think I was in shock and my brain was skipping a little bit – when my dad completely lost his cool.
“Leave the goddamned window alone! You’re making it worse!”
He wasn’t wrong.
Ah, good times.
But, why have my thoughts taken such a deep dark turn today? Why is my mind consumed by thoughts of regurgitation? Simple. In a couple of weeks, I will be boarding a bus with my daughter, EM2 (and about a hundred of her school bandmates) to chaperone a trip to Southern California. The drive will take several hours, and there is only one planned stop.
What will be the outcome (or outflow?) of this trip, I really can’t say. I am hoping the bus arrives at its destination with no mishaps. But, time will tell.
The only thing I know with any certainty is that I will not be boarding the bus with any grilled cheese sandwiches.