40 St. & Lowery

It was way too late for me to be out considering I had to work in the morning but I said fuck it I might as well have a good time and see friends I hadn't seen in ages.

We had a great time. We drink beer and ate pizza and watched a certain cartoon from out childhood that featured a certain comedian who would later go crazy and shave his head.

An artifact of our youth. Things change so quickly and it's generational. When I see what cartoons kids watch today I am appalled. The cartoons I watched were exceptionally violent in comparison and the violence was rarely explained. Psychotic cats didn't need a reason to try and detonate a small mouse with 20 lbs of explosives. It just could. It was natural. It happened in real life.

When I came of age I realized the only real difference between reality and those cartoons was the lack of dynamite in real life, and even then I can think of some exceptions to that. Those senselessly violent cartoons prepped me for the real world.

So when I sat at the el train platform at 2 a.m. watching some drunk woman lean against the wall and puke, I couldn't help but laugh. Not because it was funny but because I've been there many times before. There was a brief moment of solidarity between that barfing woman and myself - being unable to say no to the last six shots of whiskey and thinking, "I can handle it." Even when the last one goes down and we know deep down we are going to vomit we think, "FUCK IT MAN I'M WITH GOOD PEOPLE DON'T TRY AND RUIN MY FUN YOU FUCKING STOMACH."

The woman stopped puking and adjusted her posture. She swayed in place and spit a few times - told old trick to get the taste of vomit and liquor out of your mouth while convincing your stomach you don't need to puke anymore. It never works, but what the hell, it's worth a shot.

Sure enough she threw up again and this time I laughed because I thought it was funny. Just like those cartoons.