A Thanksgiving Story

(This is a factual account.)

Due to the death of the last of the elderly relatives, I find myself 
without family except for my husband and our college-age son. A dear 
friend of mine invited us to her annual Thanksgiving potluck dinner. 
This is designed for people who have no family to go to, or who can't 
get home for Thanksgiving, or don't want to. She makes the turkey, and 
the guests bring all sorts of other goodies. I contributed homemade 
bread and pumpkin pies, and my son (who is a surprisingly good cook) 
made whole-berry cranberry sauce and a salad.

There was cornbread, and chili, and a rice thing, and stuffing, and 
gravy, and I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot of things. There was soda to 
drink, and several kinds of beer, including someone's weird homebrew. (I 
didn't drink; I was the "designated driver".) About the only thing that 
*wasn't* there was coffee.

My husband gets terrible headaches if he doesn't get his coffee fix 
every couple of hours. But we were all having a good time, eating 
everything in sight. My husband somehow got talked into drinking a 
couple of glasses of that homebrew as well. Meanwhile, with the stove 
going, and close to twenty people crowded into a medium-sized apartment, 
it started getting uncomfortably warm.

As the food was consumed, the level of conversation grew more and more 
interesting. Even though most of the other guests were strangers to us, 
they were all fascinating and entertaining in different ways. My son was 
off with one cluster of people, discussing comparative religion and 
telling dirty jokes. I was swapping techie stories with a few other 
people. My husband, who is the least social of us, was drifting from 
conversation to conversation. At one point he did turn to me, rubbing 
his temples, and remark that he "really could use some coffee".

Some while later, I realized that I hadn't seen him in half an hour or 
more. I asked my son where his dad had gotten to, but he just shrugged. 
On a sudden instinct, I headed towards the bathroom. I guessed correctly 
- I heard him through the closed door, retching. (He doesn't know about 
my fetish - none of the people in this story do!) 

I collected everything and everyone, made some polite excuses, and got 
us out of there. Apparently he had gotten an almost migraine-level 
headache from the lack of coffee and the heat, compounded by too much 
food and the homebrewed beer. We hadn't been on the road for more than 
ten minutes when he mumbled weakly, "Pull the car over NOW!" I was 
treated to the sight of him bending over beside the car, as traffic 
roared by on the highway, puking up an entire Thanksgiving dinner. He 
got back in the car and we went on our way... and then he said "I've got 
to throw up again!" I pulled off the road again, while he repeated his 
performance. (Meanwhile our son was making typical teenage puke jokes.)

Alas, when we got home, my husband just collapsed into bed and slept for 
twelve hours. I didn't have the heart to wake him... but it took me a 
*LONG* time to get to sleep Thanksgiving night!