Parental puke peril

In my later teenage years I, like many, would enjoy the occasional night on the tiles on a Friday evening. On the whole, my friends and I were quite sensible and left our home town relatively untroubled as a result of our inebriation, besides subjecting those within earshot to slightly less inhibited pretentious, pseudo-intellectual musings than we did elsewhere in the week.

On one notable occasion though, I did make my own small contribution to what journalists are obliged to call BOOZE BRITAIN. The reason I recall this occasion here is that - while I don't believe I troubled any other of my fellow citizens that fateful evening - I caused my parents considerable trauma.

Essentially what happened was that I displayed a rare inability to know my limits, as a result of which I embarked upon an epic expulsion of vomit out of my Dad's car window before he had dutifully delivered me home. Further violent regurgitation ensued in the kitchen sink before I somehow found my way into bed. I awoke late the next morning with a hangover and a vague sense of mild shame, only to have this sense quickly specified and magnified by my anguished parents, as they attempted to convey to me the terror that I had caused them throughout the night: I had been entirely unaware of the unabating frenzy of puke to which I had subjected them from my own bed. My parents had had to stay up with me as I unknowingly produced this horrific spectacle. They quite reasonably feared for my life at one stage, and quite possibly saved it.

Needless to say, this is a deeply unpleasant tale, and one of which I am quite ashamed. I hope my parents know that I have been very sorry and duly grateful to them ever since. But it was only last week that I began to fully understand just how awful that night must have been for them. My daughter was not, of course, disgracefully drunk, but suffered for a good five days and nights from what has only now been identified as a urinary infection. She seems to have recovered from this ailment now that we know what it was, but last week her symptoms were as mysterious as they were terrifying.

During the days she would replace eating and drinking with desperate screaming. During the nights she would replace sleeping with desperate screaming and violent retching, as her temperature fluctuated wildly between extremes it should never reach. I am aware that all loving parents are susceptible to alarm in response to any threat to their child's wellbeing, but I assure you that I haven't exaggerated these symptoms, or the effect they had upon my wife and I. Several times I fought back tears as I watched my helpless, sleep deprived daughter dry heaving like, well, like an extremely drunken teenager.

Which is when the parallels occurred to me between this incident and the one I had caused all those years ago. Of course there are obvious differences. My daughter is about seventeen years younger than I was then, and was in no way responsible for her affliction, but last week I felt the same helpless, incomprehensible fear and inconsolable sympathy for my child that I must have subjected my own parents to on the Night I Didn't Know my Limits.

Sorry Mum. Sorry Dad.

But hey, my daughter's better now. And I don't touch vodka anymore.