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!