Can Pizza be any more important than right now…because pizza has so much power- to expose our vulnerabilities, satisfy cravings, and warm our hands with greasy comfort. As a teacher, especially those in special education right now you can appreciate the universally designed nature of pizza. Obvi, you can’t have FOOTBALL without the HUT, and don’t forget you can always have your very own personal pan pizza. But c’mon think deeper, like beyond deep dish pizza…The number of toppings, crust flavors, crust surprises, crispy, greasy, extra cheesey whatever…

Wally loves pizza as much as we do. Friday night lights to Wally means catching crusts as they fall to the dining room floor to his patient as Job mouth. But, pizza is also a personal thing and Wally doesn’t really eat his pizza. He buries his crust. Every crust is a treasure that must be safely scurried away from searching eyes and placed perfectly in a private perch to be preserved for eternity or for playing with later. First, he sees the pizza guy. Next, he wants to wait by the table for a fallen crust to take and bury in the backyard. So today, on our Sunday stroll to do the business, what do we find in our path? Someone’s pizza crust in the middle of the street.

I guess right now I could slide in some political passage about the middle of the road. About how we find the middle way by balancing all of the platforms to determine the best possible person to be elected president, because what kind of person would throw a pizza crust carelessly aside? But maybe you should slow your roll pal- maybe that crust fell from the hands of a desperate driver trying to shovel food in his mouth before banging a right? Or was the poor pizza simply the victim of a sloppy lean to the left as a youngster throwing the trash out? Who knows?

My heart leapt with the joy you get when a loved one receives exactly the gift they want. While we may have caused traffic to slow down (they shoulda read the blog about slowing down) what was important…what was vital to the universe’s very existence was for Wally to get the pizza crust.

And so after waving, and smiling happily to the confused drivers and passers by, Wally and I were able to complete our stroll and return to the gated abode where he could safely bury his treasure. Nope…I have no idea if this was a pepperoni slice, a slice of cheese, or even if it had that nastiest of all toppings anchovies…I have no idea even whose mouth savored the rest of the slice…I only know that Wally and I returned to our safe space so he could bury another crust of pizza.

Pizza can provide sustenance for breakfast, lunch or dinner, or the nameless teenage meal interval time units, and it has everything you need. Philosophically speaking, it can be firm. When you need a jolt, it can be crispy. When you need comfort and warmth it can be doughy. It’s got it all.

Pizza comes to us from everywhere. You can order out. You can pick it up, take it out. And of course you can always make it at home. But what is important is that we get what we need, and today Wally needed that pizza crust lying tantalizingly calling to him from the middle of the street. And so, we risked our lives and got what we needed. It is done. Done and buried. So, now I can relax and watch the football games knowing that in the spring I am going to have 37 pizza trees growing in my beautifully bare dirt scraped but white picketed-fenced slice of heaven of a backyard.

Cheese or Pepperoni?

Thanks for coming!