The causes of carsickness are fascinating. A cynic might say that’s a sentence which could only ever have been written by someone who’s recently been knuckle deep in the ejecta of a screaming child while pulled into the car park of a motorway services. Someone who isn’t ready to talk about that just yet.
It’s all down to the inner ear, which looks like an airport lounge designed by Salvador Dali, and hosts the cochlear, which enables hearing, and the vestibular organ, which regulates our sense of balance.
I’ve known about these two functions of the inner ear for so long I’d stopped wondering about the strangeness of that combination. Now though, rather than flashing back to the dazzling grimness and putrid stench involved in sifting through an infant’s spew, I reflect on this fascinating weirdness; that hearing and balance are controlled by a clump of dense wiring and odd shapes comprising two essential organs with no shared utility between them, in the manner of a rural Irish pub that’s also a funeral home.
If you really wanted to distract yourself from clawing through acrid pools of liquid sick, you might consider that many parts of the body perform entirely disparate tasks – your skin creates hormones, your bones make blood, and your tongue enables the ability to derive pleasure from motorway service station sausage rolls – but I digress.
The vestibular organ detects movement through the bumps and motions one experiences in a speeding vehicle. Carsickness occurs when these proofs of movement are at odds with the signals being picked up by the sufferer’s eyes, which do not detect this movement when in a car. This is for fascinating reasons unclear to someone crouched on tarmac surrounded by a growing mountain of yellowing wet wipes, his arse half-in/half-out of a stationary vehicle in the driving rain.
I mean, I can see that movement is happening. Cars have windows. Look, there it goes – the world, speeding past. I’d personally consider this very compelling visual proof that movement is occurring. My daughter’s eyes do not. Neither does her stomach which, I might be tempted to say, made a fascinating error in deciding that the best thing to do, the obvious, most constructive solution to feeling like you’re moving when you might not be moving, is to get sick everywhere; just sluice your last six meals all over yourself and your brother and your brand-new coat.
I might say it seems short sighted for human eyes to tell a human stomach to pummel an entire car with barf before they figure out what’s going on, when you’re a full hour from home and wondering if anyone remembered to pack a spare set of clothes for a baby. But I’m not ready to talk about it just yet. Let’s just say it’s all too fascinating by half.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
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