The Potty Mouth at the Table by Laurie Notaro Read Free Book Online Page B

chins that I have. However, I was keenly aware of the danger that was inching forward, about to strike. I can outrun this, I told myself. I just need to give the attendant the ticket and I can run to the bathroom. I just need to hold it together for a minute. A minute is all I need. Just a minute and then everything will be fine. A minute is all I need.
    But the conductor was busy flirting with three college girls, two sitting across the aisle from me and one next to me. I summoned all the psychic powers that I falsely claimed I had at seventh-grade slumber parties, but my fake telekinesis bounced right off the conductor and back into my face, which my hands were now covering.
    Because I would rather give birth in front of people than throw up in front of an audience. At least in the former case you get to be on your pick of Lifetime shows or at minimum in a heartwarming human-interest segment about how even on a train full of strangers, everyone came together to celebrate life and paused for a second at the wonderment of itall. But vomiting in front of people? No one wants to hold that. No one cries because it’s beautiful. No one can really get mad at you if your placenta splashes on their purse, but you know what? You know what happens when you throw up in front of a hundred people? Despite the fact that your hands don’t know what to do except hold your mouth, as if they could effectively catch the horror threatening to spew, that third wave finds its force and rushes up like it’s about to eat an Indonesian beach. And then, as if someone has just punched you in the back, before you know it, a half cup of coffee—with an excessive amount of creamer in it, I might add for the sake of detail—is suddenly riding the express car up, up, up, waiting for the signal of the most disgusting noise ever made to sound the horn of attack. It is that noise—that primitive, guttural, pathetic gag, ehhhhh-ggggg-kkkkk —that grabs the attention of the roughly ninety-nine people seated around you and turns their collective heads toward you to see who exactly is making that disgusting, animalistic sound.
    And if there’s one thing to take away from this story, if there is one lesson to be learned, it is that you should never cover your mouth with your hands in an effort to contain the spill, because that is both useless and foolish. Fanned fingers cannot catch vomit, but what they really can do is turn your little half cup of coffee (again, mostly creamer)into a spray-water feature in a fountain that rivals the Bellagio’s and make it appear that your digestive system is hooked up to the city’s water supply.
    To be clear, I threw up on no one but myself. The coffee all landed in my lap. But that didn’t stop the woman two rows ahead of me from screaming like she was on a Greyhound bus and she just saw someone get decapitated. And it didn’t prevent the adorable, flirty Korean college girl sitting next to me from shooting out of her seat as if the severed head had just plopped into her lap, shrieking at full murder volume, “ I wanna change my seat! I wanna change my seat! ”
    You can do a lot of things in front of people, even things unseemly, but as long as they don’t see it, it’s pretty much okay. The blame will always fall on the nearest baby or a person in a scooter. But it turns out you can’t throw up. You can take your pants off and shoot amniotic fluid out toward them, but you can’t hurl, not even on yourself. Even if the Linda Blair impression you have just performed for your fellow commuters is not your fault but rather the handiwork of an evil fake meatball, even if it’s just liquid and a smaller amount than any sample size you’d get at Costco. The horrified gasps from the other passengers will fall on you like a judgment. Trust me when I say you will not know what to do in the ferocious hush that follows your publichumiliation. Trust me when I say you will be frozen and stunned, like a fawn that just saw