Honorable Mention
There was a foul stench in the air.

No dairy farm or Spreckles Sugar beet factory that notoriously gave my home town of Manteca the nickname of "Man-Stinka" is still existing. The processing plant was blown-up, the dairy bulldozed and replaced with countless chain department stores and restaurants in their place. Yet it still reeked.

The stench was a fine mixture of slightly digested milk and leftover pizza from the belly of my 11 month old nephew, Caleb.

We were participating in the beginning celebration of a family friend's (Leslie Due's) wedding rehearsal party. This consisted of drinks and snacks at the bride's parents' home.



Poor Caleb had been fussy all day because of the constant interruptions from his common routine of sleep and meals. We fed him in preparation of the rehearsal party. He ate like a starving tiger cub.

He was crawling all over the home on their new carpet as time simply caught up with him, so we thought. His mother, Kristi, chose to hold him to calm him down before he would finally pass out. Guests wanted to hold him, but Kristi declined their advances.

Standing next to Kristi and Caleb, I suddenly heard an all too familiar sound of a small body spitting up. As I turned towards them, I got to witness the completion of the first eruption of chunky food on my sister-in-law's arm. Before I could complete the clearing of a path by moving the footstool and children's playthings in front of their chair, the boy regurgitated violently three enormous spews of his warm dinner.

Kristi almost captured every morsel between her chest and his small body. The two rushed to the bathroom. Her immediacy was not faster than the baby's gag-reflex, however. Kristi's sweater sponged most of the absorbent material immediately, leaving a scattered and horrific sifting of raunchy particles.

My mom and I took the emergent roles for clean-up of Kristi and Caleb, as well as the trail of fallen debris from the living room (new carpet), to the kitchen, to the hallway (new carpet), and into the bathroom. I did very well, only nearly losing control the one time Kristi pointed her head to the side and held her heaving head as if her tummy wanted to participate too. She choked it back, allowing me to cough out exhausted air instead of something else.

For this brave and speedy action taken on by my mother and me, and the extreme test of intestinal fortitude by Kristi, I would like to give us all Honorable Mentions for the 2004 flu season awards. Being that the cause of this outing most likely was caused by gobs of rich food, we couldn't honestly take the grand award. Pa Gene is still champion there.



The best part of it all was to have my sister-in-law dress like a clown from loaned clothing from a woman twice her height; allowing her to wear this cool little ensemble...



...with a smile as her badge of courage.