The History of My Life and Pizza

Pizza is the food myself and my immediate family has an affiliation to in terms of identity because of family stories. Pizza is my families comfort food and it’s what we usually have when we gather socially. Little Caesars Pizza in Bellingham, Washington used to have a dine-in restaurant we used to eat at but due to a recent downsizing remodel the dine-in area is gone. So we pick up orders to go for take-out for dinner.
Does pizza have a race? A gender? An ethnicity? A class? are questions we have
contemplated and delved for answers in reading Rouse and Hoskins and in class discussion. When I eat pizza I think I love Italian food. Pizza is a fast meal you can get on the go but it’s higher class than fast food drive-ins. The preparation and cook time is longer and you have to have patience waiting for it to come out of the oven. You better let it cool down or you’ll burn your mouth from the melted cheese and hot pizza sauce.
A couple of stories about pizza and my family are, my Mom and Dad came home with a
car full of pizza they picked up from Little Caesars at half price. Apparently when they went to
pick up our order and the pizza’s were available because they cooked a wrong order. My parents
took all of them. Eight pizza’s including our order of two pizzas. My parents came into the
house and asked if my sister and I could help them bring in our order. We couldn’t believe our
eyes when we saw the pizza’s stacked on top of each other in the back seat.
My sister and I had friends over to the house after high school events like basketball
games. My Mom usually fed us and our friends a couple of pizzas. I think our group of high
school friends had an affiliation to pizza because that’s what we ate when we got together. My
friends still comment and are appreciative of my cool parents for paying for pizza and having a
trouble free environment to stay at and have fun. My sister and her girlfriends and me and my
friends co-existed in the house playing ping-pong, watching t.v. and movies and hanging out
together. Some even ended up dating.
Guy’s could always eat more pizza than the girls. We ate and ate and 3/4 of the pizza was
consumed by the guys and the girls had only had one piece. We ate faster than the girls. This
happened on a couple of occasions before my sister had enough. When we first opened the box
to a new pizza we each filled our plates but then my sister halved the remaining pizza and set it
aside. The guys could always finish all the pizza in one setting but that wasn’t fair to the girls.
Jessica wrapped up her half and put it in the refrigerator for the next day. I was shocked. If the
pizza was there, we should eat all of it. But my parents agreed with her and she was able to save
and keep her share for her to eat at her leisure.
We also have Little Caesars with my Grandparents so pizza maintains a identity with my
family through generations of my family. There are other foods we have an affiliation to in terms
of identity. My Dad and I are both really connected to Mexican food. When we returned from
China and my parents just got back from touring India, the food we ate after coming home was
Mexican food. Getting home and getting back into a comfortable schedule coincides with eating
a meal you are used to eating in your regular schedules. Our friends at our regular dine-in
Mexican restaurant definitely greet us by our first names and joke and create a great eating
environment with great Mexican food. Pizza and Mexican food are our Soul food.