On Friday, we order fast food. It’s Good Friday, after all, we have a long weekend. There are a lot of reasons that justify ordering fast food. It’s 9 pm. All is well – for the last time this weekend.
Around 11 pm, Burke complains of feeling too full. Since we’ve just eaten the better part of a cow and forty potatoes’ worth of French fries, ‘too full’ is not out of the realm of possibility.
Nature decides to take care of Burke’s too full problem by engaging in the most viscous and violent vomiting campaign a body has known since The Plague. The dog and I wince and listen and wince some more. I am the bringer of water and buckets. Someone in the hallway must think we’re putting on an off-off-off Broadway production of The Exorcist. Her last visit to the toilet is at 4 am. After that, mercifully, she sleeps.
Effen Easter. Easter around my house never goes well. I don’t know what it is about this particular spring festival, but a quick scan of Easter memories calls to mind illnesses, ER visits, personal issues, and work troubles. Easter always finds me sick, unhappy, or stressed. Based on the entire brochure Easter puts out there, it should be quite the opposite. But, alas, no.
I don’t sleep much. Nobody sharing a small flat with another person violently upchucking their soul should. We get up later in the morning. I am in the bringer of water and electrolyte drinks and medicines and pillows. Burke is in a miserable place that I sort of theoretically understand. I think this is true for all of us; once we go from sick to un-sick, the feeling of sick is no longer fully tangible. We can explain with adjectives and nouns – nauseous, chills, weak, shaky, sour stomach – but we can no longer feel it. I only try to alleviate the pain and discomfort. Poor thing, food poisoning on Easter.
Now we must ask ourselves: what is arrogance? Is arrogance the quiet belief that the rules of sickness and life apply to everyone else but not to you. Is it the confidence that your body, luck, or good habits have somehow made you an exception. Maybe. Maybe it’s the belief that you didn’t bite into the same chicken nugget that brought down your partner. Still, when you get knocked off, you get knocked off.
On Easter Sunday I visit some friends at a beer garden. I have three beers and dinner on the mind – I have prepped chicken schnitzels and they are waited to be fried. On my way home, my stomach gets a little tight. I am trying to read, but sweat keeps dripping off my brow onto the screen of my e-reader. I get home and tell Burke I am nauseous and feel ‘a bit full’. She gives me the look of the warily sagacious. I know what’s happening, how don’t you?
Soon enough me and my arrogance figure it out. The sweats, the discomfort, the general feeling of unease and alternating dry and wet mouth. By nighttime, I know it’s coming. I head to the toilet for several near misses – hunched over the toilet, suffering the indignity, hoping for relief. Finally, it comes. And comes. And comes. What amazes me is the physical toll: my stomach muscles ache as if I have been doing medicine ball rounds with Hakeem Olajuwon.
When things finally settle down and my body stops ejecting things at an unrelenting and surprising pace and vigor, I finally come to terms. I was arrogant and I paid the price. But the most amazing thing, after all is said and done, is the fact that I spelled Hakeem Olajuwon correctly on the first try.
