Going to Hell in a Handbasket

After I mentioned in my ABCs that I sort of lost my breakfast at the Vatican one time, I realized that it was too good of a story to keep bottled up. Hence, the following tale describing why I am automatically going to hell someday. And why I can never eat banana-walnut muffins again.

It was the summer after my freshman year in college. Usually our family vacations consist of packing up the car and driving to my grandparent's house in Massachusetts, but one day my parents announced that we were going to Italy. Italy! This was totally unexpected and, you know, AMAZING. We were each in charge of doing research on some of the towns and sights we would be visiting, and my mom even tried to teach herself Italian (and quickly learned that foreign languages were not her strong suit). Sarah and I just watched Roman Holiday a couple thousand times, sure we were destined to escape from the metaphorical "palace" in which we were trapped and meet/fall in love with our own Gregory Pecks. On our third day in Rome, we were scheduled to take a guided tour of the Vatican. I hadn't slept well the night before--probably a combination of jet lag, a heavy dinner (or perhaps just lots of wine, let's be honest), and the fact that Sarah thrashes and talks in her sleep. It was already blazingly hot when I joined everyone else on the hotel terrace for breakfast. My appetite was pretty weak, but I did manage to eat a banana-walnut muffin.

It was still quite early when we met our tour guide and the rest of the group outside of the massive Vatican gates. Shopkeepers were opening their doors and setting up their fares, old women dressed all in black were slowly making their way towards the market, and everyone kept glancing at the sun as if to say, "Howabout a cooler day today, hmm?"

The tour of the Vatican started off well. The guide was funny, interesting, and knew practically everything there was to know about the architecture, popes throughout the years, security, politics, history, etc. I loved every second of it. My stomach...did not. As the sun continued to rise in the clear blue sky, my tummy began to churn. I tried to ignore it, tried to reason with it, promised lots of gelato once the tour was over. But when we were walking through the Vatican Garden, I knew my stomach had won.Yup. I vommed at the Vatican. In a BUSH. Like my dog used to do when she had foolishly eaten too much grass. It happened really quickly and I managed to catch up to the rest of the group without anyone noticing that I had lagged behind...except for my mother, whose look of utter rage indicated that she was 0.05 seconds away from dragging me to one of the Swiss Guards and having me flayed to pieces. However, my stomach felt WORLDS better. It was like sunshine and rainbows and unicorns were dancing around, rejoicing that they had purged themselves of whatever yuckiness had been in there. No matter that I had to cowardly lurk from room to room for the remainder of the tour, sure that the eyes of the holy subjects of each painting, statue, fresco, and mosaic were following me and watching with disdain. Waiting for God to strike me down with fire and brimstone and laughter, because dude, I threw up in one of his Holy Bushes.

Yet, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I was not struck down with a bolt of lightning from the heavens. No plagues were released on the city to thwart me, and no further vomming occurred for the remainder of the trip. I'll never know exactly why I lost my breakfast in a bush that day at the Vatican. I'll tell you what, though, I think of it every single time I go to church, and I always say a little prayer of apology for desecrating what was actually a very lovely sprig of foliage.

As Shakespeare once wrote, "For never was there a story of more woe / Than that of Virginia and her stomach problemo." (Or something like that, anyway.) And there ends our tale of why I am probably going to hell in a handbasket and why I can never eat such a satanic baked good again. *takes a deep bow*