As I’ve mentioned before, being a mom to this particular son* is a gas—and always educational. This morning I decided to visit him in his room before he fully woke up and remembered his mother irritates him to no end. He rewarded me by reading aloud, in Latin and then English, selections from “Which Way to the Vomitorium?” My personal favorites came from the “Girl Talk” chapter, which offered handy phrases for any modern woman:
“I need 8 slaves to carry my litter.”
“Can you pass me the rat head mixture? mM hair is getting a bit thin.”
“Please don’t read any of your poetry out loud again at dinner; we’ll lose all our friends.”
With holiday season upon us (I know this because of the piped-in carols I heard at my grocery store last night 3 weeks before Thanksgiving), you’ll want to add this book to your gift list for your favorite Latin teacher or smarty pants polyglot friends and family. Merry Holidays!
*He prefaced his recitation by explaining to his Latin-ignorant mother that “vomitorium” means “theatre exit,” “from ‘uomere,’ meaning to spew forth.”
Beth Bates 
The proper way to transcribe VOMITORIVM in minuscules is uomitorium. The [u] and [w] sounds in classical Latin were both expressed as V in inscriptional capitals, and the minuscule u in modern type originated as the Trajan V’s later cursive counterpart. The minuscule v is a late modern invention, like the majuscule U.