Tales of Woe

Americans love traveling. No doubt you either have or have known someone in college that backpacked around Europe & won't shut up about how great French/Italian/Spanish cafe culture is. I won't bother going on about it since stuffwhitepeoplelike stole my thunder already. Or I could say they already did the writing work for me. Suckers.

What I was going for is how in America there's a pretty good amount of shows telling you how great it is traveling to whatever place, & pretty much showing off how visiting somewhere else is a flawless, stress-free experience. They meet interesting, people, go to temples, & eat whatever they want/the producers demand they eat for ratings. In all this exotic fun though, there's something missing. The travel shows never mention transportation strikes, lost luggage, getting so lost its far past the point of being fun, oh, & getting really sick. Especially, this last one is glaringly missing.

Anthony Bourdain has touched on this, but there's likely a lot (TON) of toilet humor going on btwn the crew if they happen to be really anywhere but Europe. From experience, if you're on a trip where your innocent American digestive system is suddenly shocked by the presence of germs, a good chunk of group conversation will be about whats happening in the bathroom. Most of the time, fortunately, its going to be little more than an annoyance. This week we had a round of contenders who decided to kick up the standard for when it is appropriate to use the word "sick."

1. My friend, beginning w/ puking in the street & on her friends feet, later became the winner of the "First to go to the Hospital" award. As a bonus, she got to get a few rounds of shots in her butt.
2. The second contender simply gave up on leaving his room & parked himself in front of the toilet just to wait for whenever he was going to puke. *It should be noted that girls are far more likely to send each other to the hospital. Guys usually run on a "significant amount of blood" standard b/f the H word is mentioned.

The absolute winner of everyone so far, in sha'allah, is my roommate Buck. On a side note, in Jordan my roommate was pretty sick too. Weird. Anyway, this gets kinda gross, so be warned.

So Buck wakes up around 2am, & there's trouble in the stomach. He makes his way to the bathroom, he knows he's not feeling good. He did not know though he was soon going to be cursing Death for fleeing him. So Buck is sitting down, pants down on the toilet. Suddenly, he is going to throw-up w/o negotiation from his body. He turns around to puke, & his colon decides its close enough to a toilet anyway & unloads on the door. In Buck's description he used the word "Howitzer." So he eventually gets everything cleaned up. Unfortunately in this nightmare he still can't leave the communal bathroom since every time he tries, his body crosses the forcefield that tells him he needs to go back in. At some point during the night he puking (again) & again the ol' colon says "close enough."

This story is should be cited by people who pack heavily.

At that point he said he really preferred crapping his pants anyway since they were easier to clean up than the stall. You know you're having a bad night when that's your standards.

Update: To clarify the part about crapping his pants I found out he actually had them down but actively choose to pull them up cause he didn't want to wipe down the wall (again). I can't decide if that makes it better or worse.