19 March 2006

The Prince

Since I was talking with my mom last night I double checked my recollection of the Hockey family being the worst sufferers of motion sickness in history. Every family has a talent, ours was being born to vomit in the car.

"Oh you were all much worse than you remembered Beer. Up until Kitty was about 12 years old we could not drive to the mall without her puking like an alcoholic who won a lottery. The mall was only a mile away. And not just out the car window. She would puke right in the motherfucking car. Luckily it was completely upholstered in the finest Corinthian vinyl so me or your dad would just hose it out every now and then. The rest of you were not much better. My God you could puke! We tried everything imaginable to get you to keep down your food but nothing worked. Most of our grocery budget ended up getting sprayed in chunks on the streets of Sliverville or the back of the car."

The family's most proud puking moment was not to be seen in the back seat of the Earth Cruiser however. On Sunday mornings dad liked to cook us up a big Newfy breakfast of fried eggs, hashbrowns and seal flippers he had a brother back in the Fatherland ship to us. My brother Axel began to protest that he could not eat that shit, "It makes me want to heave."

My dad thought his Newfy cooking would put hair on our chests and would not let Axel leave the house on Sunday morning until he had scraped every bit of grease and dead sea creature off his plate. "There's starving motherfuckers in Biafra who would suck dick for a plateful of good food like that." You could not argue with logic like that.

After Sunday breakfast the whole shiny shoed family would slide into the car and go to church. On this one particular Sunday we got front row seats for a change. The choir sang their shitty songs, the preacher spewed his hate and Axel spewed every morsel of hash brown, every chew of greasy egg and every hunk of stinking seal flipper he had in him between our shiny shoes and the pulpit. The rest of us kids raised Axel to hero status that morning. Not only was it a first rate puke but we all got to go into the back of the church to save the family further embarrassment and ensure no one else in the family was thinking of similarly barfing up the sanctuary. We never sat at the front in church again.

My dad was philosophical in the car on the way home from church about the matter afterwards. Religion and vomit were made for each other I figure. "I guess that means more flippers for the rest of us," wheezed dad as he hauled in and out of his ever weakening lungs on an Export 'A'. Axel listened pale and proud in the back seat. He had taught pa a lesson with the contents of his stomach. Jesus may have been the Prince of Peace but Axel was the Prince of Puke.

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