I had hunkered down with my face cupped in my hands, balled up on our bathroom floor. The coolness of the tile floor soothed the fever that was welling up inside my eight-year-old body.
Being sick to my stomach was about the worst feeling I ever endured as a child—or as an adult, for that matter.
My mother came in and tried to convince me to sip some fizzy stuff that tickled my nose.
But my stomach was letting me know that it would not stay down there too long.
Our cat Blackie sat in the bathroom staring at me.
Her eyes pulsated just slightly as if she was engaged in a staring contest that was intended to drive me insane.
Later, as I napped in my bed with a plastic bucket just six inches from my pillow, I was even too sick to take any solace in the fact that I didn’t have to go to school that day.
My pillow felt lumpy and warm. I could not read as my head was pounding, and if I sat up I got dizzy.
So there I lay on my side, waiting for the battle down below to subside.
I took a little nap, waking up when the mid-afternoon sun shined through my bedroom window.
I laid there quietly assessing my tummy, head and overall sickness.
I felt a little better and reached over to my dresser to snatch up a Hardy Boys detective book, The Mystery of Cabin Island.
I read almost the entire book before my mother checked on me for dinner.
I heard her clanking pans for almost a half hour but no matter how empty my stomach was I could not even think about food.
When she asked if I wanted any dinner I knew I couldn’t as I feared it might shoot right back out.
But she enticed me to sit and eat with the family, providing me a meal of saltine crackers and a glass of Canada Dry ginger ale.
It drove me crazy watching my brother and sister eat hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.
When my mother asked if I wanted to try just a couple spoonfuls of creamy macaroni, I only hesitated a moment.
I hated the feeling it might not stay down, but I craved to have a belly-full even more.
Back in my room I picked up Franklin Dixon’s book number 99 of the Hardy Boys series, The Great Airport Mystery.
It had quite a plot with missing platinum, exposed aerial film, and a helicopter.
The Hardy Boys had just entered a large cave when I fell asleep with the book on my chest.
The stories of their adventures helped distract me from the stomach rumbles I was feeling.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com