A Sweet Story About Puke

Recently someone asked me why I never write about my relationship with Josh. I mention it when talking about general life.  But I don't discuss our relationship. I am a firm believer that one of the reasons we are so strong now is because we don't discuss our private lives in social media very much.  However, there is no harm in telling a story from almost seventeen years ago.

How often do you hear a sweet story about puke.  Next to never.  There is no situation where vomit should be cute or sweet.  Puke in general is disgusting.  This however, is one of my favorite stories and it's all about puke. 

It was that first summer. It couldn’t have been too long after we met.  Probably just a couple of months.  I was 13 and he was 15.  Granted, he wasn’t a normal 15 and I probably wasn’t a normal 13.  We both had a lot more life experience than we should have.  He grew up in a neighborhood riddled with gangs and my mom coined the phrase 13 going on 30, in reference to me, long before there was ever a movie.

We also lived in a neighborhood where there were five homes that housed a total of twelve boys and two girls, me being one of the girls.  That also meant there were five sets of parents to look after the fourteen of us.  Keep in mind that this lead to all fourteen of us having full run of the neighborhood because one parent or another was always on the look out.  We were used to going over to each others houses to hang out wherever everyone was, just because we could.

Somehow, on this infamous summer night, all of the parents were gone.  Seventeen years later no one can remember where they were but all five sets of parents went out for the night.  Not together, that didn’t happen, but somehow the stars aligned and there were no parents on the entire block. Which meant in the boys teenage brains, PARTY.

I was not a partier.  I may have been old for my 13 years but the most I had ever had to drink was a sip or two of my dads beer.  The older boys all had a lot of experience with the whole drinking thing, and the younger boys probably had more than I did, but that night, with all the parents gone, I decided to drink.

I don’t remember a whole lot about the evening.  I remember my first beer, if we can even call it beer.  Mickey’s Grenades. Malt liquor.  Whoever decided that was a good idea was sadly mistaking.  To this day I still am unsure how I drank as much as I did.  I remember bits and pieces of the evening, making out with in the back bedroom, smoking in the backyard, loud music.  But thats it.  The next thing I know it’s the next morning and I have a note on my dresser, from Josh, telling me to check the closet and do a load of laundry before I went upstairs.  So I did.  Every towel that had been in my bathroom was in the closet, covered in puke. 

I had no idea what happened and I realized that my brother, who was 10, almost 11, had been at this party too. I had no idea where he was or what had happened.  I was panicking.  So, I gathered my wits, tossed all the towels in the washing machine and went upstairs to get in trouble.

THERE WAS NO TROUBLE!  My brother, had made it home fine. Mom and Dad were none the wiser.  But I was still confused.

Later that day, or weekend, Josh came to check on me and I asked what happened.  This is where it gets sweet. 

I obviously drank too much and at some point in his 15 year old brain Josh realized this, so he decided to take me home.  He gets me to my house, puts me in my bed and just as he’s about to leave I sit up and puke on the floor.  He still claims that it was like the exorcist. He KNOWS at this point that he has to get me and the bedroom cleaned up, otherwise we’re all going to get caught. So he puts me in the shower, washes my hair!! (which at that time was about waist length), cleans me  up, puts me in pajamas, gets me in bed and proceeds to clean the puke off of my bedroom floor.  All before cleaning the puke off of himself.  He then puts all the towels in the closet and leaves me a note telling me to do laundry.

Now, most people would hear this story and think “Oh, he just didn’t want to get caught”. I am sure that that was partially the case, he is a boy after all, However, I have said for years, whenever I tell that story, that you can’t help but love someone who, at 15, will clean up your puke.  There is not a 15 year old boy on this planet that would do that for someone they didn’t have feelings for. 

Funny thing, we never did get caught.  I told my mom after I turned 18 that the stain on my bedroom floor wasn't from spilling chocolate ice cream, like I told her, but was from puke and told her the whole story.  About a year ago Josh and I were discussing this particular incident with my mom and dad and it wasn't until then that he told me that he had put me in the shower. I was mortified. He had seen my pubescent body NAKED and I spent 17 years with no clue.  And then we told his parents the story for the first time.  They thought it was hilarious and we all wished we could figure out why there were no parents anywhere on the whole street.

One of my favorite things about us is the 17 years of stories that we can share.  How many people can say that the beginning of their love story started with Mickey’s Grenades and puke?