How much dog vomit in a purse is too much dog vomit in a purse?

In the late 70s and early 80s my aunt Peggy would occasionally  Taxi Jim and or I up for summer visits to our grandparents in Westport. She had a sporty little red two door Toyota Corolla, at least to my eight-year-old eyes. On the drive up we could stop at the Chestertown exit of the Northway, which had one of the last open Dairy Queens in our part of the state. That’s when I I started my addiction to the magnificent Peanut Buster Parfait. Described from the bottom to top: a layer of hot fudge then peanuts, then ice cream, repeat another layer of hot fudge, peanuts and more ice cream. Now one last layer of hot fudge, THEN a big twist of ice cream, and sprinkle more peanuts and fudge on top. It’s more than I should eat now, and more than I could eat then. As a 50-year-old man I know it has 720 cal and I’m OK with having to run the extra miles to earn it. As an eight-year-old boy I just knew it was the very best thing in the world.I love them so much that my mid-twenties, Jen Goetz drove one from Buffalo to Maryland packed in dry ice for me. It’s possible that the reason I still live in Texas is because every town in the state still has a DQ. But I digress.

Peggy adopted a shelter mutt who looked so much like the movie dog Benji and that it was weird. Soon after adopting Nikki, when we stopped at the Dairy Queen she would order him his very own small bowl of ice cream. Watching him happily slorp it up was an unabashedly joyful experience, as any bad pet owner will agree.

So now to be totally honest, I have to acknowledge that I’m not sure if Nikki barfed because we stopped and he got ice cream, or if it was just straight carsickness from a young dog. I may even be conflating two separate Nikki the dog memories. What definitely happened is that Jim was exercising big-brother rights to the front passenger seat, while I sat in the backseat, and Nikki was perched between the two seats. Suddenly Nikki  just horked a jet of puke between Jim‘s legs into the foot well where Peg’s purse was laying open to catch it. I can still hear Jim’s exclamation of surprise and disgust. I don’t really remember if we just pulled over or how Peg dealt with it. It’s possible there wasn’t even a mess in the car. The perfect view from the back of the dog puking is the indelible part.