Super Barf

On Super Bowl Sunday, we cleaned the house top to bottom. We drew Eagles and Patriots logos. We bought every kind of Dorito under the sun and stocked our freezer with organic cheese pizzas.

And then Diana and I got the hell out of the house.

In a convenient scheduling snafu, Diana made reservations at a super fancy restaurant for us and her friends who didn’t seem to care about the most important American sporting event of the year.

But that didn’t stop Luca from having a huge rager with every kid under ten in Evanston. We left the insanity to our unflappable sitter, Schuyler, who has the superpower of extreme calmness. We bid her good luck and walked out the front door with Doritos crunching under our nicest shoes. 

We arrived hours and hours later, our livers taking a beating from the friendly fancy restaurant sommelier, wanting nothing more than to sleep. When we entered the house, we were greeted by a giant pile of bedding.

Elijah popped up from our couch and said, “I barfed.”

Based on the smell of the sheets, the diagnosis was too many Doritos. A million too many Doritos. Eli’s vomit had soaked every inch of his bed, so we allowed him to sleep in our bed so long as he promised there weren’t any other Doritos hiding in the corner of his stomach.

I slept in the guest room because I need to have my foot off the bed at all times. Also, I don’t want to be barfed on.

I woke up hours later to Luca at the side of my bed.

“I barfed.”

“That’s a bummer,” I said and promptly went back to sleep. Luca found a more receptive audience in Diana, who stripped Dorito barf bed #2 and made another pile of bedding at the bottom of our stairs. The next day, She marveled at just how many Doritos one 8 year old could hold inside himself.

Feeling guilty for not helping, I woke up early and did the laundry. Which involved having to scrape several pounds of partially digested Doritos from the folds of the boys’ sheets. I’m not sure if you’ve ever experienced the odor of partially digested Doritos, but I firmly believe it’s what Satan’s jockstrap smells like.

The boys did a nice job of trying to convince us they had the flu the next morning, but I forced the Dorito monsters to go to school.

One quick story about the game. According to Schuyler, all the kids had abandoned the game in the 4^th quarter except Luca and our friend Kitty’s daughter Gigi. They were both enthralled by Patriot comeback.

As the clock ticked down, Luca turned to Gigi and said, “If the Eagles win, I am going to hug you.” And when the game ended, Luca made good on his promise.