Tell Me That You Love Me

If there is a food that speaks the true language of weekend, it's pizza.

I'm pretty sure that pizza is part of the American dream. It seems that we, as Americans, simply cannot get enough of this stuff, especially on Fridays and Saturdays, which we have collectively deemed two very good days for consumption of this wonder, this (potentially) all-food-groups-inclusive marvel. And the thing is, no food has memories like pizza does -- at least for me. There have been many pizzas in my life. They've all been so, so different and many of them have been so, so heavenly. There have also been some really lousy pizzas, of course, and some really mediocre ones. There were the one time I ate the pizza in a school lunch (which, honestly, doesn't even deserve to be called pizza -- thank you eternally Jamie Oliver, for working so hard to fix this), and the pizza at parties, and the pizzas eaten in college and the pizzas my family has eaten every Christmas Eve. There are the pizza I've made, the pizzeria pizzas, the take-out pizzas, the flatbreads and pitas parading as pizzas. I do wonder how many pieces of pizza I've eaten in my lifetime (well, I sort of wonder -- maybe it's better to not know something like this). When I set out thinking about pizza, I ran headfirst into dozens of memories, complete with tales of freshly-birthed independence, stressful sleepovers, a dead mouse, and, yes, a bloody lip. Ah, pizza. You've shaped me well.

I'll explain to you how it began. You might like to know that there was some real, live pizza making going on when I was growing up. It may have to do with the fact that those super-fancy frozen pizzas hadn't really hit their peak yet, but, more likely, it just was because my mother was a purist of sorts, and really didn't see any sense in fooling around with some frozen disk when we could make much better pizzas ourselves and, of course, spend time together, doing family stuff like nearly losing fingers in the cheese grater and bickering about the placement of the pepperoni. (Okay, so there wasn't any bickering. I must mean my own bickering inside my own head as I focused intently on trying to align said pepperoni in a perfectly symmetrical pattern. I've moved beyond this meat-placing perfectionism since then, I promise.) I imagine that I love to make pizza now because I learned to love the process (and its ease) when I was young, but I must say that it's a process that is, by nature, terribly easy to fall in love with.

We've made many a pizza with friends, and the process always seems to morph into more of an art-making contest. Seriously, this kind of stuff makes adults giddy. (Well, at least the kind of adults that we run around with.) It's interactive, it's really quite a lot of fun, and it makes people feel a whir of unexpectedly exciting control. How many things can I put on it? What's the weirdest thing I can put on it? What about mustard? Blueberries? Can I use this leftover meatloaf? This moldy hunk of brie?

Nowadays, it's really not all that weird for "weird" ingredients to end up on pizza. When you look at this pizza frenzy that's been sweeping us off our simple little pizza feet, nothing is really all that strange anymore. It's become sort of a means of outdoing the next guy, almost. I went to a restaurant a few weekends ago that had seventy toppings for pizza. Seventy. What? Why? How? Huh? And, more importantly, is this really necessary? Imagine trying to come up with seventy toppings, all of which are run-of-the-mill sorts of ingredients. (This place was not fancy and/or artisanal, thus kale and microgreens needed not apply.) What we're left with is things like, um, I don't know, Trix cereal? Seriously, pizza guys. Ease up. We won't be upset if you only have ten toppings. Pizza gets nervous when it has to support things like clams, turkey, and bananas.

Pizza also gets nervous and very, very angry when it is called "za'." Okay, really, folks? Just stop this. Pizza is not a long word to say. It has (count 'em) a mere two syllables. You really won't waste that much energy saying that extra syllable, will you? I simply cringe when I hear it, or read it -- it doesn't feel good to say it! And what's the thing, here? And people afraid or worried about saying the real word? If saying "pizza" is too much of an embarrassment for you, then you shouldn't be talking about it or eating it, anyway. I suppose the whole thing is just an attempt at being linguistically stylish, but it makes the speaker (or writer) just sound lazy. Unfortunately, I think we have texting to accuse here. This whole thing might never have happened if we weren't all too lazy to push enough buttons to make whole words. We must have been too busy eating that cereal while driving, walking out in front of cars while we were on our cell phones with our dogs and babies in tow, eating fast food, and reading books on a tiny screen. Watch out, America, our language is about to suffer some real downsizing! Wch o Am, r lng z bt 2 sf sm rl dn-szg! We don't need those lousy vowels anymore!

Since I am apparently on a roll right now, I would take a moment here to bash the whole pineapple-on-pizza thing, but I happen to like it. A lot. Especially if it is combined with mushrooms. Not every day, mind you, but every once in a while, I love it. Matthew hates it with all his heart (and he, as you might recall, is anything but a hater, especially when it comes to food) and it is pretty much the only thing that he will not eat on pizza. And keep in mind, he loves pizza so much that it is number one on his stranded-on-a-desert-island-with-only-three-foods food list. (Hence the heart-shaped pizza. There's this pizza place in town that makes heart-shaped pizzas for Valentine's Day, and the special shape + Valentine's Day scam system = very expensive pizzas. I've never gotten one, because it seems ridiculous to spend $30 plus tip on a pizza when I can make one for $5 at home.)

Let's let the pizza saga continue, though. Our babysitter's name was Mindy. It was me and my brother, who is three years older than me. Our parents didn't go out by themselves very often, but Mindy would come over every once in a while on a Saturday night to spend the evening with us. I remember her with short hair in big brown curls. She was stylish (well, who wasn't stylish in the 80s?) and she brought her sticker albums over to show us. She would even trade stickers with us, which I thought was especially cool, that she would want to trade stickers with kids. She had so many good smelly stickers, and so many good puffy stickers.

Mindy would make us dinner while we played, and one night she had put in a frozen pizza (Tombstone, of course) to bake. When it was ready, she called for us and I ran to the kitchen. Halfway there (the entire distance was probably, um, sixteen feet, tops) I crashed face-first into the door jamb, thereby splitting my lip open and wailing out in, I'm sure, a cry so loud it put sirens to shame. As I sat there on the hardwood floor of the small hallway, bleeding into a wad of kleenex, all I could think was the pizza's getting cold. Eventually my bottom lip went from bloody and swollen to just swollen, and I trudged my way into the kitchen, my hand in Mindy's. The pizza sauce made my lip burn, but I was a tough cookie, and I forged through. Pizza was worth suffering for.

Our times with Mindy were fantastic, but one of the first times I ever felt a true, solid streak of independence was when my brother was allowed to start babysitting me. We had finally outgrown The Babysitter! We were on our own! It was liberating in a way that nothing had ever been. We could watch TV! We could order pizza! We could watch TV while eating the pizza! It was as though freedom had just been invented. We were responsible for our own selves, and we were responsible for something even more important than that -- we were in charge of ordering our own pizza. Imagine that! We (well, my brother) could call and it would be delivered to us and it would be all ours! Freedom rang in our little ears as we forged our way into this very exciting world.

He would always get pepperoni and I would like to have sausage best. We would order from Domino's, which we both adored (I haven't had that stuff in so long -- it seems to gross me out now), and I remember feeling really special when the Domino's commercial came on while we were eating our Domino's pizza. Ha ha, villainous little Noid, you don't need to tell US to order your pizza! We already have it! We would also get breadsticks, with their powdery parmesan and the tiny plastic cup of red sauce. In my ideal world, those evenings would have gone on and on forever, and I tried to eat slowly so that my happiness would last, so that I could taste the happiness for as long as I could.

The pizza, it seemed, was a tool for congregation. Pizza was the absolute highlight of all slumber parties -- in fact, I don't think anyone would have even gone to a slumber party if there wasn't the promise of pizza. This would always be the most exciting part of the sleepover event, and there is nothing that makes eight year-old girls giddier than pizza, nail polish, and sleeping bags. Some sleepover parents would buy the Little Caesar's pizza, which has always been disgusting (in my humble pizza opinion). It was pretty cheap, so it was economically practical for a gaggle of girls. You could, I think, get a four-hundred-foot sleeve of that pizza for four dollars or something. And it was just not delicious to me.

There were tomato skins in the sauce and it made me uncomfortable. It is only fair, though, if I mention that there were some people who actually liked that pizza and actually gushed over it. At the sleepover parties I attended, there seemed to be a theme of tomato-skin pizzas. Another pizza place in town, Bernie and Betty's, had pizza with tomato skin, and I just remember thinking, why can't they just look at this sauce and take out these godforsaken skins?! Maybe I wasn't a child who made a habit of saying "godforsaken," but you get the idea. I'd run into all sorts of strange tomato bits in that pizza, and after I found a stem, it was all over. I couldn't face that pizza! I was way too embarrassed (or maybe just too polite) to pick at the pizza, so I'd feign an I just ate and I'm stuffed comment, and the adults would look at me like I was crazy. What sort of kid would fill up on dinner at home when they knew pizza was in the near future?

You've been anxious to hear about the rodent, I know. It's gross, so I'll keep it short. One evening (I believe that it was after my brother's t-ball game), my family went out for pizza. Generally speaking, when people go to a restaurant, they hope to spend time with 1.) the humans they came with, 2.) the food they ordered, and 3.) no wildlife. Just as I started eating my darling pizza, I took pause, as they say, to glance up to the ledge of the booth behind my brother, and I saw a little something that was inappropriately furry. And brown. A living, breathing creature, an animal! (Okay, so it might have been dead. I honestly don't recall. Either way, it was extremely disconcerting and somewhat nauseating.) I do believe we stopped eating at that moment when I pointed out that tiny beast, and the mouse was removed, and the rest is sort of a blur. Indeed, it makes for a terrific story, but I always glance up and around anytime I am seated in a booth at a restaurant.

After visiting our tax preparer and running a few errands last night, we stopped for pizza at this little pizzeria in Lakeview and were surrounded by the most motley crew of pizza-eating folks. It was a super-casual place, without servers, just bussers. Everyone was there. It was great. A dad with two kids, a double date, two 20-something guys, a huge group of teenagers, two groups of people my parents' age, several couples, cab drivers, a high-school aged couple, a couple with a baby, and, my favorite, an ancient man (age 130 at least) with a box cutter and a gigantic stack of newspapers. He'd go through each page carefully, cutting out the important bits with his green knife. He looked like he might have woken up there this morning, in fact. He was almost too comfortable there for sure. Anyway, this pizza place completely typified the pizza-eating experience in America (or at least in Chicago). I love that you will always find such diversity in pizza places here. It's a food that makes for a common thread amongst us, and microgreens or not, it's still the ultimate, perfect convenience food. That is, unless it's got tomato skins all over it.