Buckle Up!

If there’s one thing everyone should know about me, it’s that I get motion sick on everything. I mean everything: planes, boats, swing sets, you name it, if it moves even slightly, you’re guaranteed to find me clutching my stomach like some pathetic pre-schooler. So when my friend Shannon got married in Charlottesville last winter, and I discovered that I had been inside closets bigger than the plane I had to take to get there, I could already practically feel the vomit rising in my throat. “We live in the middle of no where!” she’d proclaimed when I’d asked how living in the VA was. “Oh, sure, whatever,” I thought. “She’s exaggerating,” I convinced myself. But judging by the rickety tuna fish can that was apparently going to deliver me from the developed wonders of Philadelphia to the red necked hills of Charlottesville, I was horrifyingly incorrect.

Of course, I threw up on the plane. I hurled neatly into a plastic lined nausea bag, folded over the top, adjusted my headband, and left a gift in the seat back pocket in front of me for the clean-up crew. I dragged myself off the plane and thought I would much rather murder myself in the tiny airport gift shop next to a display of UVA sweatpants than get inside another moving vehicle. I collapsed into a cab that smelled like curry and cigarette smoke and told the driver where to take me, a trip I’d been told was, “Twenty minutes! Max!” If by twenty minutes, Shannon meant forty-five minutes on a windy road that was probably paved back during the New Deal, then yes, the drive was only twenty minutes! Max! Thankfully, through my nauseated haze, I had somehow managed to have the foresight to bring along another barf bag, just in case, and as my cab driver spoke in whatever language it is cab drivers are always speaking into their bluetooths, I emptied out my stomach yet again. 

I was pretty sure we had driven all the way back to Philly by the time we pulled up in front of the estate where Shannon was getting married. There was a circular drive, a creek with geese, naked, winter trees surrounding everything, and Shannon, in her fabulous wedding dress, cheesing for photos with her very-soon-to-be-husband, Nate (whom I actually really like, something that might not seem like that great a feat, but considering I usually think very little, if anything at all, about my friends’ various significant others, Nate’s stamp of approval was a big deal). I told the cabbie to drive around the circle, next to the guest houses, so I could slip out of the car and into my room without getting noticed by the nuptial paparazzi. Dragging a rolling suitcase and carrying a bag of my own vomit in the hopes of a garbage can, I was hastily told by some cross-eyed member of the wedding staff that no, the place to check in was in the main house. 

Let’s recap here: I had essentially been puking for the past three straight hours, I looked and smelled like a total disaster, and I was carrying a bag of my own vomit as I made my way to the registration desk. This was what Shannon saw when I entered the lobby and she was taking her wedding photos. “You’re here!” she squealed and outstretched her arms in my direction. “Hey!” I said, hoping to sound appropriately cheery. “I’m so excited!” she squeaked at an even higher frequency as she made her way towards me. “Me too!” I backed away, and yet she still went in for the hug, while the photographers continued to click and snap away, a noise like a courtroom stenographer. I yelped, “Don’t come any closer!” probably much too loudly and much too quickly, and tried to hop out of the reach of her arms. But it was no use: she was hugging me and my arms were straight at my side, as if I were getting crushed to death by an overly perfumed great aunt. “Shannon?” I said as I pulled away and held up my white paper bag like some sort of sacrificial offering, as if somehow that would explain all. “Um?” she asked, eyeing the bag, and gingerly taking a step back, smoothing out her dress. “I threw up.” I hung my head in shame and moved on toward reception, leaving Shannon behind, her face plastered with total terror.

Eventually, the bag of vomit got deposited in the proper receptacle, Shannon and Nate got married, and my stomach made a full recovery thanks to a heavy prescription of vodka tonics and wedding cake. Details of the day were forgotten, eclipsed by the beautiful ceremony and then the groom’s inordinately intoxicated, hot tub skinny dipping, and his own version of late-night projectile vomiting, but still, every single time the event is brought up, someone just has to say, “Hey, remember when you--?” “Yes! I remember, damnit!” I shoot back, knowing that while my friends are all seemingly growing up and moving on, getting married and buying houses and puppies and china, I am still carrying around a barf bag and asking to sit in the front seat on long, torturous, family car trips.