I’ve been craving pizza to the point of distraction lately. It seems as if everywhere I turn, pizza keeps popping up to taunt me – on TV, the Internet, supermarket flyers and even my friends raving about someplace they recently went for pizza and how it was the best thing they’d ever eaten.
Which is why I’m on the verge of un-friending all of them on social media.
The problem is I haven’t been able to eat pizza since the 1980s, when I received the news from my doctor that all of my years of stomach pains and terrible cramps were due to the fact I was both lactose and fructose intolerant. I immediately was put on a diet that eliminated both offenders…which basically meant if something tasted good, I couldn’t have it. However, if it tasted like wallpaper-paste spread on a sheet of cardboard, then I was in luck.
Anyway, to confirm just how desperate I am for pizza right now, I’d even settle for one of those squares of pizza they used to sell at the drive-in movies – the squares that were sprinkled with powdered cheese and sat under a light-bulb for five hours to keep them warm. I think they were the same squares the ladies in the school cafeteria used to dole out on Fridays, back when it still was considered a big sin to eat meat on that day.
My first taste of real, fresh Italian pizza was back when I was about 11 and the local YMCA held weekly dances for kids in the fifth and sixth grades. Not far from the dance was a pizza parlor where a group of us would head afterwards and each get a huge slice with extra cheese, for only 25 cents. Add a Coke and it was 35 cents. I’d then spend the entire week craving another slice…or more. To this day, I still don’t know if I went to those dances because I enjoyed the dancing or just because I was hooked on that pizza.
If my late husband still were here right now, my torture would be even more unbearable. The man’s entire diet consisted of cheeseburgers and pizza. In fact, when one of the pizza chains came out with an actual cheeseburger pizza, he couldn’t have been more excited if he’d won the lottery.
It never ceased to amaze me, however, that he liked pizza. I mean, he was the type who wouldn’t even so much as try certain foods because he judged them solely on the way they looked. He wouldn’t eat rice because it looked like maggots. He wouldn’t eat spaghetti because it looked like worms. He turned his nose up at spinach and lettuce because they reminded him of the grass and weeds out in our backyard. And the one time I attempted to serve him mushrooms, he accused me of trying to kill him.
“So how on earth did you ever talk yourself into trying pizza for the first time?” I couldn’t resist asking him. “Let’s face it, pizza can resemble a lot of disgusting things if you’re judging it only by its looks.”
He said he’d gone out clubbing with a group of his army buddies one night, and after a few drinks the guys had been hungry and ordered pizza. My husband had been determined not to have any, but the guys made bets on which one of them could succeed in “convincing” him to try it.
I had the feeling the winner of that bet probably had to physically restrain my husband and shove that first bite down my his throat. But whatever method the guy used, the rest was history. A new pizza-lover had been born.
I was tempted to ask my husband for the name of the guy so I could hire him to come over every night and also “convince” him to eat a few peas or carrots. My husband’s reason for refusing to eat carrots was because they were most commonly seen as noses on snowmen, so whenever he saw a carrot, he associated it with boogers (I’m totally serious here).
Throughout the years, he and I must have visited every pizza parlor/restaurant within a 300-mile radius. The minute a new one opened, we would race to it as if the owners were giving away $100 bills.
To my embarrassment, no matter what type of restaurant we were in, my husband still would ask if they had pizza. One time, when we went to a Chinese restaurant with friends (their choice, not ours, of course) and he asked the server if they had pizza, I nearly burst out laughing at the poor guy’s bewildered expression. As he stood there in front of a wall festooned with Chinese dragons, he looked as if he wanted to say, "Seriously, does this look like an Italian restaurant to you?"
But there was another time when my husband asked for pizza and I couldn’t control my laughter. It was the year we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with a trip to Las Vegas. On the night of our anniversary we decided to put on our best clothes, go to a fancy restaurant and splurge on an expensive meal – one that was served on actual plates with real silverware laid out on tables that featured linen tablecloths and napkins.
So I cringed when my husband asked the man who took our order if they had pizza. To my shock (and my husband’s delight), he said they could make one especially for him.
Sure enough, a formally dressed server delivered his pizza on a round, pedestal-type serving platter with a lid on the top. Using a silver pie-serving utensil, he delivered one slice to my husband’s plate and then stood there, his hands behind his back, patiently waiting until my husband finished chewing and was ready for the next slice, which he again served to him.
I chuckled as I ate my steak and watched the expression on my husband’s face grow more and more pained as the server continued to stand there and repeatedly asked, “Are you ready for another slice, sir?”
My husband had never had any problem eating an entire pizza in one sitting, but after he choked down slice number three-and-a-half, he told the server he was full and asked if he could take the rest back to our hotel. When we saw the bill, we determined it had to be the most expensive pizza in the history of pizzas. Even worse, my husband said it wasn’t even half as good as Pizza Hut’s.
But to me it was worth every penny because it gave me something to tease him about for years.
After my husband retired, his knees became so stiff and painful, he had to use a walker and rarely left the house. So I became the official pizza pick-up person for him, mainly because no one delivered any type of food to the prehistoric rainforest where we lived.
Depending on his mood, it was a different place every week – Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Giovanni’s or one of the many “Houses” of Pizza…Espom House, Suncook House, Hooksett House, Supreme House, Out House (okay, maybe I made up that last one). If Door Dash had been around back then, I could have made a lot of extra money picking up pizzas and delivering them, seeing I was going to be at just about every pizza parlor in the area at some point anyway.
Many times when I was grocery shopping, my husband would call me and ask if I could pick up a pizza on my way home. I always did, but one afternoon a big snowstorm was rolling in, so I wanted to get home as soon as possible.
“That’s okay,” he said. “Just grab one of the pizzas they sell in the deli. It will do.”
That sounded easy enough. “Okay.”
“And seeing you’re in the supermarket,” he added, “maybe you also can pick up a package of mozzarella, some pepperoni, grated cheddar cheese and a pack of ground beef to add to the pizza…you know, to make it taste a little better?”
It ended up costing me about $25.
But now I think I finally do understand my husband's constant craving for pizza and can empathize, mainly because I would be willing to sell one of my kidneys for just one slice right about now.
Of course, after I ate it my stomach would cramp up in protest and seek its revenge by forcing me to camp out in the bathroom for about three days.
But still…I’m seriously considering it.
And while I’m at it, I figure I also may as well treat myself to some ice cream for dessert…with half a can of real whipped cream on top.
After all, if I’m going to suffer, I want to make certain it’s really worth it.
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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
