Last Friday, I went out for drinks with a friend in the downtown area of Vancouver. Since my friend is older and an early riser, we decided to adjourn early and call it a night. We were at Waterfront Station about to go our separate ways when something caught my attention. On the stairs leading down to the Canada Line trains, I saw a young lady being carried down the steps by her friends. I initially thought they were just having some fun but upon closer inspection I saw that the young lady was unconscious. They were awkwardly holding her with one friend getting the arms and another carrying her legs. There’s an elevator right next to the stairs so I’m not sure why they didn’t just use that.
That wasn’t the most interesting thing I saw that night however. Trailing just behind the passed out girl was a young looking dude, maybe nineteen years of age. He was sober enough to be on his own two feet but when I saw him he was holding onto the staircase railing for dear life. Not only that, he was hunched over, looking like he had seen better nights. It was at this moment I heard cries of “gross!” and “ewww!!!” from the people around him. I looked again and saw that the reason why he had stopped on the stairs was because he had just vomited all over them. Though he was small in stature, he had puked an impressive amount. He had nearly covered the width of the wide staircase with his vomit, causing people to have gingerly tip-toe around the mess. Not only was the amount impressive, the vomit was a fascinating shade of pink with randoms chunks of food that were visible to me even from over 20 feet away. The pink vomit made me think he had been drinking red wine but I don’t know many nineteen year old dudes who go out and get wasted on red wine.
I didn’t stick around to look at the spectacle any longer. I did wonder about two things as I made my own way home. First, who was the poor soul who had the responsibility to clean up the vomit? Do they even have a clean-up crew around near midnight? What if it had to wait until morning for the clean up? Fresh vomit isn’t that great to begin with, I can’t imagine what hours old vomit is like. Second, I wonder if that dude made it down to the Canada Line train on his own. He must have had a terrible Saturday morning.
Well, that was my public vomit story of the day.