Ever since Thanksgiving, I’ve been fighting a cold (upper respiratory something) that’s offered me a range of delights from stuffy nose to runny nose, sore throat, cough, sinus pressure, and pain.

It’s been a nuisance.

But I’ve learned something about myself. Something I guess I’ve known all along but never really admitted.

Especially to myself.

I’m not a spitter.

You remember that scene in “Titanic” when Rose insists that Jack teach her “to spit like a man”?

I never had a Jack Dawson to teach me that.

So I can’t just hock it back and open my mouth to release it.

The mucus, I mean.

It won’t come out.

The nasty stuff drains down the back of my throat in a marble-sized ball, then slithers away like some kind of raw oyster, never to be seen again.

It’s not that I haven’t tried.

Spitting. Expectorating.

But the agony of choking something up and trying to release it is more than my poor body can endure.

My eyes tear up. My nose stops up. And I fear I’m going to throw up.

Something that’s on par with spitting.

Ain’t gonna happen.

Not in my lifetime.

I don’t do vomit.

Period.

I can count on one hand the number of times in my life that I’ve thrown up. Most were after anesthesia. Or the flu.

Imagine my dismay when, the night before Domer and I were to leave to return him to campus after Christmas Break, he came down with a horrid stomach virus.

The poor kid was “blowing and going” from both ends for a solid four hours.

I was ready to haul him to the hospital. He wouldn’t consider it.

“Vomiting is a sensory experience,” he told me. “You see it coming up, you hear it, and you taste it. Again. Then, you smell it and you touch it when you clean it all up.”

Right, I thought, as my own stomach knotted up.

Nothing like too much imagery 😉

Needless to say, we postponed our trip a day.

And, while he wasn’t exactly “well” then, we had to travel if he was going to start the semester on time.

So why, when I was doing the right thing for the right reasons, did I feel like “The meanest mom in the world”?

I mean, look at the likes of Susan Smith, who sent her two young sons to their deaths while strapped in their carseats. Or Andrea Yates, who drowned five of her kids in their Houston bathtub.

Now that’s mean.

Not hauling a kid back to a college he loves!