A Little Christmas Cheer...?

I keep hearing people everywhere relive comical and/ or disastrous holiday stories and that got me thinking... so here is one of my holiday stories for you.

In 1st grade my family lived in Monument, Colorado. It is gorgeous there, especially in the winter. We lived in some townhomes in a cute neighborhood and my parents threw a holiday party for all of our friends and neighbors a couple of days before Christmas. Of course, they invited out next door neighbors, who had three children of their own who I occasionally played with. The oldest daughter of theirs was one year older than me, and the middle child was a year younger so we got along alright... not best friends or anything, but we still had someone to play with on snow days on when our other friends were out of town.

Anyhow, so everyone came over for the Christmas party. My mom goes all out for the holidays and the house was decorated so perfectly it looked like a spread in Southern Living magazine. She had baked all day and the dining room table was overflowing with delicous holiday cookies, cakes, pies, candies and all of the normal party food. Us kids were downstairs playing in between my room and my sisters room (what kids can resist a water bed and bin after bin of Barbies?). We had all the dress up clothes out and every toy my sister and I owned on the floor and in the hallway between our rooms. We would play and then run upstairs to grab snacks and steal away to our toy bungalow again.

Our neighbor's oldest daughter- let's just call her Jessie-kept running upstairs to grab massive handfuls of Christmas hard candies. She would take a couple giant scoops and come running downstairs just to plop herself in the corner and eat ALL the candy she brought. Eventually there were no more candies left and she took to playing with Duplo blocks in the hallway. I had run to the bathroom at the other end of hallway to fill my teapot with water so we could have tea party (duh) when I heard horrific sounds coming from doorway of my sister's room. I turned to look down the hallway and all I saw was a stream of candy colored vomit hitting the hallway floor.

If you are like me, then puke is one of the worst bodily fluids to have to deal with and I don't do very well hearing it, smelling it, seeing it or thinking about it. Actually, I will do anything to avoid it. ANYTHING. I think this comes from the many traumatizing experiences I have had with it... or have had happen to me. I have an arsenal of puke stories that I should compile into a puke story novel, but it would make me far too ill to relive each story.

Back to the story. I panicked and screamed bloody murder - but to no avail. I ran the opposite direction in a blind fury up the stairs to alert my mother of the atrocity happening downstairs. She had heard my screams and met me on the landing half way, a bewildered look on her face. Other parents followed. Hot salty tears streaked down my face as I tried to explain what was happening, but loud sobs were the only sounds that escaped. My mom ran down the stairs with me in her arms until she reached the rainbow colored puddle on the floor. And what ensued was even more frightening... Jessie was still going. I've never seen more fluid come out of one body before. The hall floor, the hall walls and the first 4 feet of my sister's room were covered in that putrid multi-colored liquid. At this point, half the party was downstairs staring wide-eyed at one little girl in hysterics and another expelling 2 pounds of Christmas candy onto off-white carpet and walls.

So... Merry Christmas... and don't let anyone eat a whole bowl of Christmas candy alone.

P.S.- I didn't really hang out with the neighbors anymore. I know it wasn't their intention to scar me further, but I just couldn't chance being around people that would go around puking up a storm.