Pizza

When I was a kid and Mom said it was pizza night, that meant that Dad was going to make pizza. It was the 1950s and I had never heard of delivery pizza. Pizza was a kit that dad bought at the supermarket. It included a box of dough mix, a little can of pizza sauce, some grated cheese 'product', and a package of sliced pepperoni. That kit produced a pizza the size of today's medium pizza, and it fed Mom, Dad, and maybe three or four kids. This, of course, was before my mom had given birth to the full compliment of eleven children. By the way, that pizza would be considered terrible by today's standards. Tiny little slices with sauce that had a metallic flavor and that weird, fake cheese.

The other day Mark and I got into a "discussion" about pizza.

"I hate that Chicago pizza. It's all puffy and big. It's like cake... that's what it is, cake."

"How the hell is that cake. Deep dish pizza is nothing at all like cake."

"No, it's cake. Sugar and flour... that's cake."

"Oh for krissakes, it has sausage and cheese and crap on it. No frosting, no sugar."

"Trust me, there's sugar in that."

Okay, so I do have to admit, Mark knows how to cook and he knows ingredients. There probably is some sugar in a deep dish pizza.

"But that's not really Chicago pizza. Deep dish pizza is not what I knew fifty years ago. Thin crust pizza cut into little squares, that's what I call Chicago Pizza. Not that I don't like the deep dish, I do."

"Oh my god, that shit. You Midwest rubes don't know pizza. Now New York pizza, that's real pizza. All greasy, drippy, and cut in wedges like a pizza is supposed to be cut. Not like little square crackers."

"Well you're just fucking nuts. It's all good. Chicago old school, Chicago deep dish, New York grease on crust, it's all good."

"No, only New York pizza is good. Only slices bought at a storefront, with bright fluorescent lights, that you fold over and eat while walking down the street is real pizza."

"No it isn't. It's just different pizza. Just like deep dish is different from thin crust, square cut. Just like old school Chicago pizza is different from artesian pizza pulled out of a brick oven. It's all just different, with none better than the other. If you like it, eat it. Don't tell me only one style, New York, is best."

"God, you people are such yokels, such bumpkins, with your stupid, fat, deep dish pizza."

After that outburst we shut our pie holes for a little while, and it got quiet. Then I chimed in.

"That, Mark, is why everybody hates New Yorkers."