If you're eating or have any semblance of an appetite and want to keep it, stop reading. Or perhaps you are the sort that can handle it all. Anyway, the following story is a bit disgusting.
The last weekend was the Victoria Day long weekend when Canadians start doing fun summer things like going camping. Never mind that most people don't know that it celebrates the current Sovereign's birthday (and marks Queen Victoria's birthday)... Anyway, the rodeo was in town and along with 3 other friends, I decided to go see it. Or at least the Saloon portion of it. Which is to say that it is a large room (probably a gym or something), with a stage and lots of cheap, disgusting beer. Outside is a lot of carnival type food.
We proceeded to eat and drink while there... and some of us got a bit more tipsy than others. I had my bottle of water confiscated at the door to the Saloon because I suppose the folks who sell water inside the Saloon need to sell me a new bottle of water. Anyway, after many hours of standing about and enjoying the somewhat questionable country music, we decided to head home. My newly washed car (I had spent 2 hours in the afternoon washing it) was parked some distance away. As we walked back to the car, I asked everyone if they needed to throw up anything prior to getting into the car. As you can imagine, no one had anything to throw up. Good enough. We start driving. I get onto the Highway towards home. My friend in the front seat is dozing off. I keep driving. I look over at him and he's still sleeping... only now he's throwing up as well. Yikes.
I pull over to the side of the busy highway and ask him to get out of the car and finish his business. I see that some of that disgusting stuff is on my seat. Needless to say, I am quite taken aback by this turn of events. I am sitting there thinking how best to clear it all up, so I go ahead and find some of those wet wipe things and wipe the seat down. Disgusting. I give the guy a few of those things as well so he can wipe himself clean. That took about 10 minutes and we are off on our way again. I ask the guy if he's going to be okay and he says fine. So I continue. Few minutes later, I see him just going full tilt all over the seat and the floor of the passenger side. Yuck. I pull over once more (now right by a bridge) and survey the damage. The seat is covered. The floor is covered. My poor car.
The stench is far past bearable now. I go out to make sure the guy's not dead. He's not. He's throwing up chunks of beer soaked pizza and god knows what else. He's covered in puke himself; his jacket, shirt and pants are just a collage of chunky goodness. Err... grossness. I am sitting there surveying the disgusting scene in my car and the two clowns in the back of the car are howling with laughter. I couldn't help but laugh for a bit... it was a comical scene; 3 drunks, one soiled car and me trying to figure out how this nightmare would end. Another 10 minutes later, after trying my best to wipe the seat and the drunk guy clean, we are off once more. I am praying to all known gods asking that my car be spared any further damage. As we drive, the guy sticks his head out the window and throws up some more. Joy.
This went on for a bit. I dropped off one of the clowns and decided to head back to the highway to drop Sir Pukes-A-Lot home... and they changed the way the exits work! So instead of going West on the Highway, here I am going East. Worse still, I saw the sign say West... and ignored it in favour of listening to the remaining clown in the back of the car. Big mistake.
After making another loop, I headed back to the city. By this point, the guy in the back had figured out that I had some unopened (plastic covered) magazines there and fashioned a make-shift puke bag. That came in handy soon enough. More puking (this time in the bag) later, I got the guy to his home and sent him off with his puke bag and all the other crap along with a plea to not dehydrate.
After that, I dropped off the last person in the car (who had stopped laughing finally) and then rushed off home in the hope of cleaning up this horrid mess. I got home, thanked my lucky stars that the rubber mats had taken the brunt of the puke and proceeded to hose that off. Once that was done, I spent about 30 minutes trying my very best to clean off the puke on the seat (and bits on the floor) using lots of paper towels, latex gloves and disinfectant wipes. Not that it made much of a difference. After a half hour of cursing, I had done my best to clean up the mess. I went to sleep dreading the stain and stench that was still in the car.
I got up early enough in the morning and took stock of the mess. Red stains and a horrible stench. Just wonderful. I found a car wash fellow close to home and got him to shampoo the entire car and wash it all over again. $90 and an hour later, the car looked clean. The smell was quite another story. That didn't go away. I can't believe my car smells so disgusting. I have put dryer sheets in the car in the hopes of it masking the stench. And since then I have not been back to the car.
The lessons learned here are many. Foremost amongst them is that it is no longer cool to transport middle-aged drunks. Their reaction time is too long and their control of their various orifices is at best mediocre. I shall take transit from now on and meet people where ever. Or park and walk pretending to have taken transit or something. And I hope the universe owes me one for being saddled with this mess. And in case you're saying that was bad... something someone told me (when I related this story) struck a chord with me. It could have been worse. Like he could have had diarrhoea as well. When you look at it that way, I escaped with minor injuries! If you've got friends who have the urge to drink themselves to oblivion, let them. Call them a cab or something though. Or call their parents. That works even better.
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