It's the Simple Things, Like Parking a Tiger

The nations ‘yoof’ radio network had a talkback break the other day, to commemorate the second anniversary of Anna-Nicole Smith’s death. The topic was “Places I Have Thrown Up”, and the whole thing really made for some fabulous and classy radio.

There were the usual places (the cupboard at the party, the back of the car, the boyfriend's hair, etc etc) but in a turn up for the books, the producer had done her work, and on this occasion the final two callers were show stoppers.

The penultimate caller was a guy with a well honed story. You could tell it was true, and he had refined the telling of it over many dinner parties and pub lunches, so he knew how and when to throw the detail.

On a crowded train, between stops that were very far apart, having thought that he would make it home and then realising that he was in worse shape than previously suspected, he threw up in his briefcase. He tried to make it as subtle as possible by hiding behind the lid, but there was no real way to make it inconspicuous. He then poked his eyes above the level of the open lid to see a trainload of horrified passengers staring at him. He rounded the story off with how hard it was to balance a briefcase full of chuck on a swaying train, without it leaking out the sides of the closed, but not watertight case, and what he wasn’t able to rescue from inside the case when he got home.

Like I said, he knew his story, he told it well, and on any other planet he would have ‘won’ the talkback, but he was trumped by a five year old. The little person followed by very simply and sweetly (and with not a little pride) saying,

“I threw up on a cat.”