Vomiting, Barfing, Whatever

One of the great joys of being a parent to a young child is getting another (partial) kick at childhood yourself.  Included in this is participating the kind of gross humour that kids revel in.  So it was one evening while driving Lena home from her guitar lesson.  Our topic of conversation was all the euphemisms for vomiting.  Some of the gems we came up with:

• throwing up;
• puking;
• tossing one's cookies;
• blowing chunks;
• barfing;
• driving the porcelain bus;
• upchucking;
• ralphing;
• retching;

In addition to coming up with all these words, we laughed at joke I once heard from a stand-up comic:  "Last night I was choking on my own vomit.  It was my own fault, though.  I was eating it too fast."  We giggled like, well, little kids all the way home.

Next up on the agenda:  all terms for pooping....