Columns Apr 22, 2015 at 4:00 am

Food Court Vomitorium

Steven Weissman

Comments

1
I have no idea what the OP wishes people had done. Helped mop up her kid's puke? Because, no. I would be insta-puking myself, and that wouldn't help at all. Take the kid to security or something to get a doctor? I am genuinely baffled. But apparently that would have made me the asshole in this situation in which she didn't just ask for whatever it was she wanted.
2
I hear you, Anon. One time I pooped my pants in the food court, and not one person ran to go get napkins for me. Not one.
3
Sea Otter: Have you ever pooped in your pants on the bus? No one will help you there, either. And that's just sad.
4
I also wouldn't have helped because like #1 stated, I only have to see someone puking and then I puke too. Blech! I think people are way too self-absorbed with their lives and the lives of their spawn. Anonymous, pick up some damn napkins and clean up your kid's puke, already. Boo hoo! No one would help you! So sad! You've lost your faith in humanity, right? Jesus wept.
5
Another entitled parent expecting people to bend over backwards for them because they have a child. If you didn't want to clean up puke, you shouldn't have had a kid.
6
Talk about entitled. So you had to clean up your own kid's puke with no help. What do you want? A fucking medal?

Here's a hint sweetheart: most people can barely stand the sight of their own kid's puke - someone else's will make you barf. Actually, I take that back: I have thrown up over my own kid's puke. People didn't rush to help you because they were most likely trying to avoid getting sick themselves.

7
I KNOW!!! Just yesterday my cat took a shit outside her litter box and no one, I mean NO ONE offered to help me clean it up!!!
8
Comments did not disappoint!
9
Your kid puked, he didn't stop breathing. Right, please put down your food and help me clean up my kids puke. Then you can go back to eating - eww. The collective gasp was probably people trying not to puke themselves. And, it sounds like you simply walked away and left the remaining mess for the poor teen to pickup, which would make you the bid ass in this equation. Why didn't you at least help clean up the rest of it? reflect much?
10
So you are so pissed off that other people didn't help that you give the "fuck you" to them BUT you didn't even say thank you to the poor kid who did help? And you want the rest of us to feel sorry for you? You are the worst!
11
Anon, quit projecting your understandable surprise and embarassment onto others. A little kid puked, so what? Mine puked in the middle of a grocery store once. You alert the management so they can come clean it up with the proper tools (hint: not 1000 napkins) and then you move on with your life. If you're extra cool you give the person who had to come out $10-20 and say thank you.
12
Are you serious with this winy diatribe because no one helped you clean your kid's puke? So sad for you....you're 'that person' no one wants to be and you probably don't even know it......well, you probably do, or you do now :)
13
@5: This is correct. Kids puke, and your job as a parent is to clean it up. Sure, if another like-minded parent wanted to chip in, but not their responsibility.

@ All The Rest: This is par for the course of whiny self-absorbed pap that The Stranger has been publishing of late.
14
My youngest did a great projectile Technicolor Yawn in a Chinese restaurant.
Cleared the place out, but it was mostly fried rice.
Mamasan wasn't terribly phased, she said that new people could now come in, plenty of seating.
15
I love being the first to stand up for IA! While I agree with everyone so far I am willing to give the benefit of doubt here. Mall food courts are usually swarming with people and it's difficult to walk away from your kids when you're the only adult with them. So picture yourself juggling a puking child and trying to round up enough napkins to keep people from stepping in the mess. While you're hammering this woman with your snarky comments keep in mind if this had been my son I wouldve picked him up and gotten the hell out of there. She actually stuck around and cleaned it up!!
16
Anon's gender isn't mentioned, so why do people assume this is the mom? There are just as many helpless, whiny, entitled dads who expect others to do their parenting for them.
17
@ 16: Way to go, shift the obnoxious parenting issue to a gender issue. Typical Seattle Hipster. Go chug a PBR.
18
You people are ridiculous. Someone should have handed IA some napkins so he or she can tend to her upset kid. It's not enabling entitlement, it's being a decent human being. Fucking Christ you people are assholes.
19
Thank you QE Pirate. I've got kids - and yes, this shit literally happens. We're not asking you to bow down in homage to our mad parenting skills - it's just..,we're already super embarrassed, flustered and probably a mite bit disgusted ourselves. But dude, we clean that shit up because yes...it's our spawn. It doesn't mean we are so in love with ourselves or our children that we want to roll around in it. I've had this almost exact situation in a grocery, and after I cleaned that shit up - alerted the authorities and proceeded on my way to the checkout with a grocery cart filled to the brim with my weekly necessities (already obtained prior to the pukage), I then had to cope with the 20 something asshole cashier who was practically throwing up while checking us out. It took all my motherly grace to not throttle that woman-child. But please, enjoy your douchbaggery while it lasts. Parenthood comes to most of us eventually.
20
#17, I'm confused as to why you spend so much of your life commenting on an alternative news site if you hate this shit so much.
21
@virginia mason. It's because he's a troll. And regarding your comment 16, I was thinking the same thing. In fact, I assumed IA was male.
22
@ 20: I agree with 75% of the views here in The Stranger, however 25% are simply ASININE.
23
@19: Seriously? You're calling someone a woman-child because she had trouble seeing puke without dry-heaving a bit herself? Many people in this very comments section (some of them parents!) said they have the same reaction. Are they all children? It's not a function of maturity to have a weak stomach. Some people are physiologically wired differently.
24
OMG, fuck the OP so much. First of all, your kid might have had Norovirus. Norovirus is that SUPER DUPER CONTAGIOUS thing that makes entire cruise ships into nightmare vessels of hell. The particles in vomit are so contagious that it takes only 10 tiny little viruses to infect you, and the viruses aerosolize for up to an 8 foot radius when someone vomits. If I saw your kid puke all over the place, I'd hold my breath and run. And you might have caused a Norovirus outbreak, so thanks for that! Also, Google "emetophobia" sometime. Some of us have that. Your kid puking near me is basically just like someone throwing a tarantula at someone with a fear of spiders. I don't have kids, I don't want kids, and I certainly won't be handing you any fucking napkins within your kid's vomit blast zone.
25
I'm gonna puke all over the Alderwood Mall food court, as 30 yro woman, and I expect SOMEONE will offer to serve me by cleaning up the bile. Even if my mom couldn't come to the mall to hold my hand for this special occasion, I still intend on puking up hotdogs and cinnabons. Hurray for a lack of sensibility!
26
I find it hard to believe that after five days and a couple of dozen comments, no one has yet pointed this out:

You fed your kid what they serve at the mall food court, and you were surprised he couldn't keep it down?
27
Decent human being or not, it's ridiculous to expect anyone to run TOWARD the vomit. You're a shitty parent. Stop feeding your kid garbage from a food court. And you could have ran away for five seconds to get napkins. No one was going to kidnap your puke covered kid.

@20 He has no other life is why. Don't engage him, he has nothing to offer the world.

28
I work hard all week. I want to go to the food court to enjoy my egg roll, cinnabon and orange julius. Can't you make your kid puke before coming to the mall?????
29
Note to headline writer: Despite what the nuns told you in parochial school, "vomitorium" is Latin for "Exit".
30
It still haunts me to this day that I fled from the bus like a coward when the intoxicated homeless man peed his pants and did not try to help him clean it up with my gym towels.
31
@29 THANK YOU, JEEZ.
32
Shame on you lady - after the incident it should have been put out of your mind and never spoken of again. It is certainly not something you should foist on us for public consumption!
33
The ability to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes has become so rare that it should be considered a "super power".
34
I hate kids. I hate puke. I hate parents who think I should give a damn about their kids. Clean up your kid's puke and stop trying to be the martyr. You're little puking terror ruined a lot of people's meals. They're the people that should be writing in complaining about the the woozy kid and "whoa is me!" mother who expects others to parent for her.
35
OP is the worst kind of entitled breeder. You should apologize for your disgusting spawn ruining everyone's meal.
36
@34. ...or father. Just saying we don't know which parent wrote this.
37
Also 34, how can you hate kids and be a happy pappy?
38
So sorry this happened. Had I been there I would have totally offered you some MALT LIQUOR and COCAINE.
39
Perhaps you shouldn't have kids if you expect other people to clean up their messes. Give me a moment. Your kid barfs and now it's everyone else's problem? The only problem is that YOUR kid ruined everyone else's lunch.
40
I like to think I would have brought the OP some napkins or paper towels, since I vividly remember my kids puking in public.

But clean it up? That sure ain't happening.
41
Oh pulease. You got embarrassed. Maybe he got embarrassed too. But let me let you in on a little secret - embarrassment will not kill you. I can tell you after three children that I STILL gag when I smell vomit. I cleaned up everyone of their messes and I will clean up my grandchildren's messes if that day come and I would gladly run for towels for a friend. But I can assure you, if your kid vomited near my lunch, I would not be finishing my lunch and I sure as hell wouldn't be cleaning up his sick. We could judge your parenting (why did you have a sick kid at the mall - in the food court for Christ's sake!) but we won't it's not our place. But it also is not our place to clean up after your kid just because you're embarrassed.
42
Clearly Mom needs a fistful of sedatives ....... Climb down off that soap box and stop striking out at others. From time to time we all have to clean up a little vomit espically when we have kids!!
43
As a parent myself, I tend to have a lot of sympathy for someone stuck in a mess of a situation while trying to juggle kids in a public place. I might have offered to help clean up if there was something reasonable I could do (read: not trying to clean up vomit with a wad of napkins). But after reading this asshole's "sorry not sorry" shit, I am glad I wasn't there to help, because what a shitty attitude. Could people have helped more? Sure. Does that mean you should be glad your kid barfed all over the food court because those other people deserved it? No, dickhead. And I love this "you distracted me from focusing on my child by not helping" shit. What the everloving fuck is that? Yes, everything that happens to you is really a way someone else did you wrong. Fuck you.
44
There are way too many children in the world. Yes, of course, once they're here they should be housed, fed, educated and loved - but please, stop having so damned many of them! It's NOT something special that only you can do, no one's forcing you to have kids any more, and every kid that's born pushes us closer to ecological disaster.

Your little Filbert or Lydia may be a genius, but he or she's one of many millions of geniuses, and we'd all have gotten along just fine if you'd worn a condom that night.

It'd be great if people currently in the habit of reckless reproduction would stop popping them out for, say, the next five years, and give the rest of the world a break.
45
I know! Nobody ever tells you when you stick a penis in a vagina that you might have a kid that pukes. and you can't take back the defective kid. That sucks! Don't breed them if you can't clean them. that reminds me back when I was a kid and taking chemotherapy for cancer. I would puke after the dose and nobody would help me that sucks!
46
I agree with #18. I have a sensitive gag reflex and no kids, but I would not hesitate to help a harried parent in such a situation. And not only does it not say WHICH parent, it also doesn't say they ATE in the food court, just that the kid puked there. They could have been walking through after an organic lunch prepared at home. Kids puke. We all did. And I can see not wanting to leave your child in a mall full of stranger danger to find paper towels to at least absorb some of the mess, or cover it so others don't have to see it. Courtesy and humanity no longer exist.
47
@29 -- I looked at the comments for this just to see who would post that... ;)
48
Whatever happened to individual responsibility? Make the kid clean up his own puke.
49
Guys, the big difference here is that NOROVIRUS IS CONTAGIOUS. REPEAT: FUCKING CONTAGIOUS AS FUCK. If this woman's kid had spilled a milkshake, or knocked over a bucket, or ANYTHING, I would have helped happily and without even thinking about it. Contagious illnesses? NOPE NOPE NOPE. Just nope. That's what parents are for, and I'm not a parent and never will be.
50
Trust me, Xiaogui, she was a woman-child. It had nothing to do with her sensitive gag reflex and everything to do with her bubble-gum popping, college girl attitude. "Oh.My.God. Becky, look at her....vomit."

But methinks you are missing the point.
51
Your decision to reproduce is not my problem! You expect me to clean up after your dog's shits as well?

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