Linda Blair

Two Words. Projectile. Vomit. When I say it in my head, it feels more like a paragraph than two simple words. Once upon a time, I was uncomplicated, unspoiled…and well, puke free. Back in those days, projectile vomit was something I had heard of but never experienced. It was that funny thing that happened to Frat Boys who had eaten bad chicken wings the night before a bender.

In any case – did you know that stuff can actually launch 6 feet? I sure as hell didn’t. It was a scene straight out of the Exorcist (which, incidentally – I always thought was contrived; the barf scenes that is). How terribly mistaken I was!

I was awoken in the wee hours of the morning by the bellowing cries of my infant daughter. I rushed down to her crib. I pick her up…as she is facing away from me (and now, I look back and all I can think is, “Sweet Jesus…thank you for that.”), I move to her changing table b/c something just doesn’t smell right. Oh, little did I know…that the smell I thought was the meager “stinky-poo” my bundle of love had made was really Hades reincarnate trying to escape the Underworld via the porthole of my baby’s mouth.

Upchuck hurled out in a fire-hose blast that was so powerful, it knocked me backwards. I stood transfixed. It went full force and nailed a wall easily 5 feet away. I must have screamed, as my husband ran downstairs. He called my name, "Cathy?". I turned. The hork followed suit. In a stream lasting what probably was a sum of 30 seconds, I took out 3 out of 4 bedroom walls, a crib, a changing table, a rocking chair, two dressers, a toy box, much of the floor, the dog and the front of my now appalled husband. Immediately, my twisted mind thought, “If we could unleash this power properly; we’ll never have to pay to power wash the house again.”

The baby, unscathed in this whole extravaganza, burped once (to which, I almost dropped her on the floor and ran for my life) and passed right out. It was in that precise moment, I realized that the saying “sleeping like a baby” meant you could wake up screaming, yak your guts out and go right on back to sleep without a care in the world…the next time someone says, “Oh, she’s sleeping like a baby.” I’m bolting for the door.