I'd been waiting for this day since I was a buck-toothed, freckle-faced twelve-year-old. My first New Year's Eve in New York City! There I was, crouched on the ground, everything I'd eaten that day being vomited, confetti-like, outside my gate at LaGuardia Airport.

Crappy New Year, everybody!

I heaved and wiped away tears. My stomach muscles tightened like a corset as I expelled the sick. A touch of the stomach bug my sister had recently? A bad reaction to the prepackaged salad offered during my in-flight dinner on Continental Airlines? A strange, vertiginous effect of having to stand up six times in the last hour, thousands of feet in the air, so the woman next to me could retrieve a sweater from the overhead bin, go to the bathroom, return the sweater to the overhead bin, go to the bathroom again, and so on?

Whatever it was, it brought me back. I knew I'd have to vomit there sometime, as I am programmed to publicly hurl anywhere I've spent significant time. (New Hope, Pennsylvania, you're next)! And just as I knew I was back in Texas when I saw my reflection in a belt buckle, my fellow travelers' lack of concern over the fact that I was suddenly upchucking more food than most bodegas stock was a sign. Had it not been misty as the plane prepared for landing, I might have seen the skyline - that's the romantic beacon. Still, this was enough. I was in distress and no one gave a damn. It was like a New York "howdy".

After ralphing, I scampered away from my putrid pile to the baggage claim. I waited for my two black pieces of Samsonite luggage - easily the most indistinguishable bags ever created - behind a blonde NYC family that had just come back from New Mexico. Mom stood beside me with a huge hammered tin lampshade and a sunburn. Dad parked the two easily tripped over children on the edge of the conveyer belt. With all their toys. I seriously considered offering unsolicited parenting/airport etiquette tips. However, I decided to "accidentally" vomit on the little girl, instead. Much more effective.

Okay, I seriously wish I had. Alas, there was nothing more to expel, or so I thought. I felt like it was probably around Groundhog Day when my luggage surfaced. By the time I joined the long, snaking line to the taxis, I was pretty sure I heard the last bells of school before summer break. The reminders that I was back in NYC - that NYC was back in me - were endless. A stooped, older man in front of me slowly wheeled his luggage to close the gap in the line. We were still really far back, but I needed to get as close to the front as possible. You know, to remind myself how many people I'd have to kill to even glimpse one yellow checkered inch of a cab. "There may be a ball getting dropped in Times Square right about now," I thought, "but there will be some balls getting kicked here in Queens if you don't pick up the pace, buddy!" I proceeded to get impatient and unjustly resent others for having the same itineraries as me.

Some fools even farther behind in line than me started to count down from five, crescendoing into an ironic "Happy New Year!" Everyone in line snickered, even the blonde little girl I'd wanted to regurgitate the day's meals on. Her doll had been beheaded when someone stepped on it on the way to a foam cooler of donated blood. (I'm not kidding about the blood - the cooler was officially labeled).

Eventually, I got a cab. I watched the fireworks explode across the velvet sky as the cabbie cooed to someone on a cell phone, in a foreign language, of course. It was a new year, and I felt lousy-great, relieved that my travels were almost over. I struggled to get my luggage up my stoop and in the building, dramatically flung my sweaty wrist to my forehead, and promptly vomited all over the stairwell.

All the hangover and none of the buzz. I had to ring in the new year rushing to wring out my pant legs.