Episode CXIII: Eats, Vomits and Leaves

[Warning: this post is NSFD (Not Safe For Dinnertime). It contains two graphic images and a number of references to unsavory sights and smells. You've been warned.]

It was a brisk fall morning; my wife and I decided to drive to campus. As I approached the car I noticed someone had left a note tucked into the driver's side window. Then I noticed that I had left the passenger side door unlocked. Finally, as I opened the door, I noticed that a large volume of vomit had been thoroughly deposited throughout the entire front of the vehicle.

[Let's just get the nasty images out of the way, and then be done with it, shall we?]

  

Taking stock of the situation at hand, the first thing I learned was that the depositing perpetrator's most recent (i.e. wholly undigested) meal consisted largely of sliced carrots and whole almonds. The second thing I learned was thanks to the note left on our car. The note was scrawled on a crumpled envelope, and it read as follows:

"A minor incident occured last night in your car. Keep your car doors locked from now on!"

[The actual document- ignore the blue ink, those are my notes]

I gather the note was left by the perpetrator, or more likely the perpetrator's friend. (It is possible that it was left by the responding police officer, but that would be pretty tacky for a cop to write a note on the back of an envelope.) In any event, the perpetrator left one additional item in the car. A "Virgin Mary" / Jesus on the cross jewelry item:

Perhaps the perpetrator was a Roman Catholic? If so, she was not practicing Christian virtue that night (viz. breaking and entering, destruction of private property, and most likely heavy intoxication.) Or perhaps she left jewelry as some sort of penance? (My preferred form of penance would have been in cleaning the mess.)

Anyhow, I attempted to procure information from the Cambridge police department, which surprisingly enough was the least useful avenue of investigation I was to pursue. It took nearly a dozen different phone calls, with half a dozen different officers, and the best I got was a brief, uninformative voicemail from Detective Sarah Drewicz, the officer who had responded to the incident (she neither answered nor returned my calls despite multiple attempts.)

[My internet stalking suggests that one of the two women in this photo is the elusive Sarah Drewicz.]

The small bits of information that I did manage to gather would indicate that 1) The perpetrators were two females, 2) One of the females 'got sick,' and 3) Someone called the police. Clearly my taxpayer dollars are paying good dividends for me here in Cambridge. With all the preceding information I have constructed the following plausible scenario:

1) Two females, out on the town, stop by my local hip restaurant/bar around the corner. One of them has a meal featuring sliced carrots and almonds. She also has far too many alcoholic beverages.

2) Woozy female decides to get some fresh air in an attempt to calm her stomach.

3) Female realizes it's cold outside, searches for a quiet and warm hideout. Tries a handful of car doors until she finds one that's unlocked (ours, only 4 cars away from the restaurant.)

4) Female gets some R&R in the passenger seat of my car.

5) Female vomits, rotating her head 180 degrees as she does so, for maximum impact.

6) Female #2, looking for her prodigal dinner companion, finds her in our car, covered in her own refuse. Calls police, files report.

7) Females go home with impunity. As far as they are concerned, the moral of the night's story is, and I quote, "Next time you should leave your car door locked."

Well the rest of the story is history. Meg was in a hurry to get to class that morning, so I volunteered to drive us to campus (holding the vomit-covered shifter with my bare hand). Once there I commandeered from my lab some nitrile gloves, a trash bag, some cleaner and a large quantity of paper towels, and went to work. I started by scooping out the pools and puddles (the consistency of snot), then picking up the chunks and detritus, followed by some rubbing and scraping of the encrusted material. This was later followed by a second round of cleaning by Meg, and a third round of cleaning by me. The end result (within the week) was a car which was a little worse for wear, but which no longer smelled. This was a good thing because the following week we needed to pack up the car for an eight-hour road trip to Toronto.

In summary, the moral of the story: always double-check that you locked your car door, because you never know who might come by and try to vomit into it.