Projectile

Based on what I understood from watching Jurassic Park and several other chaos-themed sci-fi films, Occam's Razor states that the least complicated explanation tends to be correct.

Murphy's Law, another trendy apocalyptic axiom, predicts that anything that could possibly go wrong eventually will.

The least complicated explanation for why James projectile vomited seems to be that he was hungover from too much drinking at college reunion. However, countless other cliches tell us that appearances can be deceiving, so we must rule out this knee-jerk explanation based on the evidence: James was coming off 8 hours of relatively sober sleep after abandoning Saturday night drinking festivities early for the comfort of his Favre dorm bed and a jug of water. Luckily, an even simpler explanation exists: James had contracted a stomach bug. Our friend Catilin had arrived at reunion with a touch of the flu, and at some point James slurped it from the rim of a red plastic solo cup and proceeded to harbor this quickly spawning parasite inside his cozy intestinal track in advance of its grand entrance 36 hours later.

In hindsight, James's uncharacteristic early bedtime Saturday night, along with his lack of multi-syllable responses to my incessant blabbering, should have alerted me to his incapacitated state well before we crossed the Conn/Mass border. Unfortunately, I was blinded by the bliss of a road trip with my buddy, enamored of the smooth luxury of his VW Touareg, and so caffeinated from my large Dunkin Donuts coffee that my jaw hinge started aching.

When James asked me to take the wheel somewhere in southern Vermont I was not anticipating disaster. When he turned down my sour cream 'n onion potato chips I thought he might be on a low-fat diet for his upcoming wedding. When he reclined in his seat and stopped answering my questions altogether I figured he might be practicing a new meditation technique or trying to prove a point about silence. When he sat up abruptly about 30 minutes outside of Montpelier and told me to pull over I figured he needed some air and possibly a bit of space to execute a tidy and controlled vomit in a nearby trash bin or toilet. And as he sprayed the dashboard, windshield and heating ducts with an aromatic blend of stomach acid, Dunkin Donuts coffee and dining hall breakfast, I realized that Murphy just sliced us with Occam's Razor and damn did it sting (and stink!).