Alice threw up Friday night.

It’s the first time she’s ever thrown up, and it scared the bejeezus out of her.  Which is understandable, really.  She had no idea what was happening.  Can you imagine what you’d think was happening to you if you could erase all memory of ever throwing up from your mind and then suddenly awaken at 3am thinking that your insides were exploding out of your mouth?  At least, that’s what I would probably think.   That my insides were exploding.  Based on the volume of her screeching cries, I don’t think I’m too far off the mark in what she was thinking, either.  Poor kid.

Sorry, too graphic for a Sunday morning?   Welcome to motherhood.  It was too graphic for Friday night – or more accurately Saturday morning – at 3am, too.

On the one hand, I’m actually a little bit proud that we made it to 2 1/2 years without ever having a vomiting incident before.  On the other, I’m in a shame spiral because what I thought was food poisoning last week must have been a flu bug, so she likely got it from me.  Or the nanny, who also went home sick last week in the same span of time I had it.

When the nanny went home sick – having vomited – I went into “disinfect” mode.  I bleached all bathrooms, door handles, appliances, and counters.  I washed all hand and dish towels.  I re-washed all the bottles.  And, an entire week went by without anyone else feeling ill.  I thought we’d escaped, and I’d already breathed my deep sigh of relief.  Too soon, grasshopper, too soon.  In time, you will learn that there is no escape.  It is an illusion.

And really, this is a lesson I’ve already learned before.  I should have just drawn from my many experiences in a large family to know it.

To say my family is large is somewhat of an understatement.  In fact, describing it is a bit like a word problem in math class:

Two parents have four children. Later, they have four more. Two children get married and have four children each.  One parent and one child pass away, and one other parent is added to the family.  That parent brings three children, and together the two parents have one more.  How many people are in the family?

Answer: “The limit does not exist!“

Also acceptable answer:  Wine.  Because wine is always an acceptable answer.

My entire immediate family – siblings, their spouses, and their children – used to gather every year at Christmas.  Until that one fateful Christmas we all refer to as “the Year of the Barfy Flu.”   I won’t go into detail, but it was bad.  Almost every single one of us came down sick within the span of 18 hours.

Using the answer from the question above, calculate the maximum number of minutes per day that no one is throwing up if each person throws up five times for approximately 15 minutes, and there are only three toilets in the house, so only three concurrent people can be throwing up at a given time.

I haven’t done the math, but I think the answer is 0.  Or at least that’s how it felt.

After that, we stopped gathering in the winter months altogether and instead reunite in the summer, when the chances of ravaging sickness are lessened.  But we all bear scars from that time.  My brother, the super smart one, has been known to actually spritz himself with anti-viral Lysol hourly after being exposed to any kind of stomach flu.  And while that sounds crazy, it actually does seem to work… so, crazy smart maybe?

As my coworkers can tell you, my scars come in the form of hyper-vigilance around any kind of sickness or potential germ habitat.  When I’m traveling, I carry hand sanitizer with me and use it liberally.  Shake hands with someone?  Spritz.  Touch someone else’s keyboard?  Spritz. Use a white board marker sitting in the conference room?  Spritz.  It’s a little OCD, but I don’t get sick very often, so I think it actually helps.  Though they don’t believe me that I am not like that at home (preferring soap and water and with much more normal regularity), so I’m just kind of known as the OCD germaphobe.

I can live with that.   After all, I did wear surgical gloves on an airplane once when I was pregnant and had to travel during flu season. More than one raised eyebrow was pointed my direction, but guess who didn’t get the flu?  That’s right, this girl right here.

I’m not sure there was much of a point to this little diatribe, which I always feel bad about when I’m writing.  Like if I don’t get to the point about something, I’ve wasted your time.  So to prevent me from feeling bad, I’m posting this link which will give you 19 helpful ways to tell if you, too, are a germaphobe.

And for the record, almost all of these describe me.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnew92/19-ways-to-tell-if-you-are-a-germaphobe-9qja