While reminiscing about the arcade of my youth (Lindsey’s Drive In, Brewster, Washington) I remembered this little story that I haven’t yet committed to journal…
In those early years after moving to middle-of-nowhere, Washington state, our little family spent a lot of time with Mom’s mother and stepfather, probably because they had a reasonable amount of money on hand and we, er, didn’t. (When Mom was married to one particular sleazeball, however, we didn’t spend a lot of time with the grandparents. I won’t name names, ’cause Sis may read this and her blood pressure will go up enough just thinking about it.) My step-grandparent, one Mr. Dobson, joined us for dinner at Lindsey’s one day. I’m fairly certain that Mom, Sis, Grandma and “Grandpa” and I were the dinner party, but I won’t swear to that on a Bible or anything.
Hey, who’s going to turn down pizza? But, wait! What’s all of this icky garbage on top? Olives? They make my stomach turn, and that’s just from the smell. Mushrooms? I can tolerate the fungus occasionally, nowadays, but back then it was another icky foodstuff I tried to avoid. So, being something under the age of ten years old, I childishly voiced my disdain for the selected toppings.
What was Mr. Dobson’s rational, reasoned response? He scraped every last olive and mushroom off of the entire pizza… and placed this unwanted bounty on my plate. That’s right, folks. Everyone else got to eat plain sauce-and-cheese pizzas while I choked down what I could of the disgusting glop in front of me. One child complains, everybody suffers. Perhaps there was supposed to be a lesson for me in the experience, but if there was, I didn’t take away what he’d hoped for. Mostly I left the table with the devout belief that my “grandpa” was a complete asshole. Not that I had the words for such a sentiment for a few years yet, but you get the picture.
Oddly enough, this experience didn’t turn me off to pizza entirely. We never invited “grandpa” to dinner at a restaurant after that, though…
