Pardon Me Pizza: A personal narrative

Imagine you are hungry as a bear, cold like an ice cube, and the scent of pizza is swishing, swirling, twisting its way around until it finds you and wraps you into a warm hug.

The snowflakes were gently falling into the soft piles of snow and after a cold winter day of skiing at Beaver Creek, my friend Jillian and I were ready for some lunch! We wobbled inside the cozy warm hut, called Spruce Saddle, our ski outfit preventing us from walking properly. The ski boots clicked and clacked on the wet tile as we walked up to find a table for our ski group.

After clumsily taking off all of my gear, I felt hungrier than ever. Jillian and I took off to find out where that delicious smell of pizza was coming from. As we excitedly entered the food court, we looked like dogs on a mission; following that one scent from fire hydrant to street sign, except we were looking for the pizza oven! When we found it, the line was growing so we hopped into the chaos of freshly baked pizza.

As we waited in line with our empty brown trays, we curiously looked over the people standing among us. Noticing a woman in black energetically hoping around and a man with a green shirt, playing with his jacket zipper as he stood right in front of us in line.

“Arg! The line is moving so slow!” Jillian commented as we took one tiny step forward towards the deliciousness we were patiently waiting for.

“I know! I am so hungry!” I agreed. We talked quietly about all of the people surrounding us as we made up stories about how they are related.

This line could not get any longer! I thought to myself. But just as we neared the front of the line, the zipper guy in front of us sharply looked around. His neck straightened as he scanned the busy area. He obviously did not find who or what he was looking for because just as the guy making pizza asked for his order, the zipper guy raised his hands to his mouth and shouted at the top of his lungs, “WHERE IS THE PIZZA BABE?”

The entire restaurant went completely silent. So quiet that you could hear a pin drop on the tiles. We looked at each other, ready to burst into tears of laughter but instead we held it together because we did not want to make this huge scene bigger. The zipper guy continued looking around and when his eyes caught us, we shrugged and looked at him like he was crazy and we had no idea what he was talking about. But as we later found out, it was not a good decision to look at the man like this.

The man’s face turned the shade of a very very ripe tomato or the scarlet shade of lipstick my grandmother wears. Beads of sweat made their way down his face and onto the slippery tile.

Jillian and I were just about to run away and flee this disastrous scene which was only getting worse when the man looked down at us and said, “Not you!” Now it was our turn to be embarrassed as the silent room of people whispered and uncomfortably shifted. We didn't want pizza anymore. In fact, we weren’t even hungry. Our delicious lunch had turned into an unmistakably horrible encounter with a completely crazy man and his unresponsive babe.

As we strolled back empty handed to our table, Jillian and I couldn’t help but laugh about what had happened earlier. As I buckled up my skis, my stomach hurt so bad from laughing but I had many questions swarming inside my head. I was curious about his babe and where was she? We never got to answer any of these question but this mysterious experience will always make Jillian and I laugh and wonder.