Transition: Friday Night Pizza
Last week, my mom was surprised to discover that my brother and I greatly look forward to Friday's dinner each week. Almost every single Friday since I was a kid we've had pizza for dinner. While some other families traditionally have a big dinner on Sunday nights, Fridays seem to be the only ones that consistently bring the four of us to the same area for a meal. The style has changed a bit over the years, but the basics are the same. Mom comes home, orders the pizza, someone gets it 'rarely do we rely on the services of the half-baked delivery man), we eat in the living room while watching television, and we have leftovers the next day for lunch.
My earliest recollection of the pizza night involved a pizzeria a few blocks up at the top of the street. New Hope Pizza was the standard for years. We would always have at least one pizza with extra cheese and sometimes one with pepperoni. If not, we'd just have the two with cheese. For a long time, I was convinced that I didn't like pepperoni. It would be too spicy, I was sure of it -- a fact with no evidence to support it. My aversion to tasting new foods, coupled with my timid nature 'especially strong as a young boy), once got me in a sticky situation. At a friend's birthday party, my friend's dad asked the guests who wanted pepperoni. For some reason, I raised my hand and said, 'Not me!" Because of the din in the dining room, the dad assumed my outstretched hand was a request for the extra topping. He brought me a slice and I stared at it, confronted with a situation that my meek mind could not digest. Do I admit that I didn't want this kind, send it back like some snob rejecting a botched order at a restaurant? Or do I pick off the slices of meat and hope that nobody notices that I excluded the distinctive characteristics that make this particular slice different from what I really wanted? I chose to eat the pizza in its entirety, not out of a desire to try something new, but to avoid disrupting my hosts in any way. And yes, it was spicy -- I needed an extra cup of soda -- but it wasn't bad.
So, pepperoni wasn't bad. I still preferred cheese, but this new type gave me something to shake up the monotony of the regular. Now, let me describe the quality of New Hope Pizza. For a while, my undeveloped pallet accepted those flat pies. Looking back on it, they were never bad -- just not the best. They were thin slices without much substance. For some reason, I always put oregano on my slices. I could have added garlic and red pepper as my family members did, but oregano was the lone spice for much of my experience with New Hope. The oregano added something to the pizza, gave it greater fullness. Eventually I began to eat my pizza with garlic and oregano, but never the red pepper. I continue to ignore it -- it's too spicy. Sometime in the hazy period known as The Great Shift, I began to ignore the green spice and add only garlic. The Great Shift -- a term I just started using in the last sentence -- includes the months that we as a family began ordering pizzas not from the pizzeria up the street, New Hope, but from the place a few miles down the road, Pat's Pizzeria. Pat's is a chain, but located only in four states on the Atlantic coast. This change was accompanied by an increase in use of our mom's cell phone. We could easily call New Hope from the road to place an order; their number was 764-FAST. Easy to remember, easy to dial. Pat's had no mnemonic for easy recollection, so James and I conspired to put it in her phone so we would have access to the superior northern Wilmington pizza experience.
I don't remember ordering buffalo wings from New Hope, but it's a standard now whenever we order from Pat's. These, too, have expanded my taste. I need buffalo wings with pizza. Even when I was at Elmira, I had to have wings with my pizza. My eccentricity with eating wings is that I consume as much of the edible parts of the wing as possible. It's drawn some criticism from my friends, but if we ever hit another depression, I'll have just a bit more protein with all of those chicken wings I'll be able to order with my huge paychecks as an English major. I know that my future is going to take me a long way away from where I am now, geographically, temporally, physically and emotionally, but as long as I can afford some pizza in my future homes once a week -- on Fridays, of course -- I'll be content.
-Paul
My earliest recollection of the pizza night involved a pizzeria a few blocks up at the top of the street. New Hope Pizza was the standard for years. We would always have at least one pizza with extra cheese and sometimes one with pepperoni. If not, we'd just have the two with cheese. For a long time, I was convinced that I didn't like pepperoni. It would be too spicy, I was sure of it -- a fact with no evidence to support it. My aversion to tasting new foods, coupled with my timid nature 'especially strong as a young boy), once got me in a sticky situation. At a friend's birthday party, my friend's dad asked the guests who wanted pepperoni. For some reason, I raised my hand and said, 'Not me!" Because of the din in the dining room, the dad assumed my outstretched hand was a request for the extra topping. He brought me a slice and I stared at it, confronted with a situation that my meek mind could not digest. Do I admit that I didn't want this kind, send it back like some snob rejecting a botched order at a restaurant? Or do I pick off the slices of meat and hope that nobody notices that I excluded the distinctive characteristics that make this particular slice different from what I really wanted? I chose to eat the pizza in its entirety, not out of a desire to try something new, but to avoid disrupting my hosts in any way. And yes, it was spicy -- I needed an extra cup of soda -- but it wasn't bad.
So, pepperoni wasn't bad. I still preferred cheese, but this new type gave me something to shake up the monotony of the regular. Now, let me describe the quality of New Hope Pizza. For a while, my undeveloped pallet accepted those flat pies. Looking back on it, they were never bad -- just not the best. They were thin slices without much substance. For some reason, I always put oregano on my slices. I could have added garlic and red pepper as my family members did, but oregano was the lone spice for much of my experience with New Hope. The oregano added something to the pizza, gave it greater fullness. Eventually I began to eat my pizza with garlic and oregano, but never the red pepper. I continue to ignore it -- it's too spicy. Sometime in the hazy period known as The Great Shift, I began to ignore the green spice and add only garlic. The Great Shift -- a term I just started using in the last sentence -- includes the months that we as a family began ordering pizzas not from the pizzeria up the street, New Hope, but from the place a few miles down the road, Pat's Pizzeria. Pat's is a chain, but located only in four states on the Atlantic coast. This change was accompanied by an increase in use of our mom's cell phone. We could easily call New Hope from the road to place an order; their number was 764-FAST. Easy to remember, easy to dial. Pat's had no mnemonic for easy recollection, so James and I conspired to put it in her phone so we would have access to the superior northern Wilmington pizza experience.
I don't remember ordering buffalo wings from New Hope, but it's a standard now whenever we order from Pat's. These, too, have expanded my taste. I need buffalo wings with pizza. Even when I was at Elmira, I had to have wings with my pizza. My eccentricity with eating wings is that I consume as much of the edible parts of the wing as possible. It's drawn some criticism from my friends, but if we ever hit another depression, I'll have just a bit more protein with all of those chicken wings I'll be able to order with my huge paychecks as an English major. I know that my future is going to take me a long way away from where I am now, geographically, temporally, physically and emotionally, but as long as I can afford some pizza in my future homes once a week -- on Fridays, of course -- I'll be content.
-Paul