Pizza Task

I was attending what I assumed to be a college level studio course, though the surroundings indicated I might have been at a very nice high school. Nothing was ever accomplished in that class. Everyone just sat around and chatted, waiting for the professor to guide us, but the professor (a 30-40 year old man) just sat like a lump next to my peers staring off into the distance. A woman stopped by our classroom, and I was asked to leave the class to help with a small task. At first I was concerned I would miss something important, but then I remembered we never do anything, so I decided to go and help.

On the way out the door, one of my peers stopped me and showed me her "sculpture?" Her "sculpture" was several angled and toggled layers of cut styrofoam. Some of the layers had diagonal lines carved into the styrofoam, and there was a small red square cut into the middle. She was showing me that she had listened to suggestions I had given her, and I remember feeling weird that she was talking to me about it rather than the professor. I realized that I had become somewhat of a replacement teacher for our comatose professor. I reflected on that thought while the woman and I walked down a pillar-lined hallway and into a theater.

The theater was arranged in a strange way. The seats were facing forward in the same direction but the stage was small and towards the back and left of the seats. I didn't question the arrangement, rather I focused my task. The woman took me behind the last row of seats to a linen-dressed table lined with white and pink binders that alternated in color. The woman informed me that she needed me to lay the individual pages of the script on the floor, so people from the audience could come back and get them. I remember thinking that they should just take the binders rather than a single page from the script, but I did not voice my opinion, and began my task. The woman stripped the linen from the table, and arranged it neatly on the floor behind the table, so I could lay the pages out. The pages were in individual sleeve protectors, and the combination of slick plastic and fine linen made the pages slide slightly out of order.

The sloppy appearance of the script pages bothered me, so I decided to stay a little longer to arrange until everything met my standards. Meanwhile, the play was about to begin. A girl was sitting on stage in a rocking chair, and I could tell she was stalling a bit "probably a technical error or theater drama" I thought then the music began. She was singing but I realized that she was lip-syncing to a prerecorded tape of her voice. The quality of the singing was too perfect and everything sounded overproduced. "That makes sense" I thought to myself because that's the way it's done anymore. I realized that it would be hard to sing as loud as the actors would need to in order for everyone to hear them. At that point, I decided that the play had distracted me enough from my task, and I wanted to just finish up and head back to class.

I was probably too distracted by their misalignment to notice that my once script pages were now pizzas. I know the pizzas were homemade because of the variety of sizes and the imperfection of the circles. Some were covered in tinfoil and the others remained uncovered and exposed to the germs that might be on the floor. The pizzas were generally overloaded with toppings, and none of them look really appealing, but I returned to my task despite all of this. The pizzas were even harder to arrange because they were constantly sliding out of place and under the chairs in front of the linen. I discovered that creating two lines with pizzas snug against one another would hold them there, so I began to do this. I realized then that I had been grabbing pizzas haphazardly when they needed to be in a specific order, so people would know where their pizzas were. Since there was nothing I could do at that point, I continued on.

When I got to the middle of the line, several pizzas covered in foil kept slipping under the same chair. This chair was occupied by an older woman with chin-length gray hair and a square face. I sensed that I was probably bothering her, and my worry was confirmed when she suddenly spoke to me. "I'll take my pizza now please. It has brown on it." the woman said the way a privileged woman might ask a servant. "OK?" I responded in a slow and confused tone. Even though it was not my job to distribute them, I felt the need to try to help the woman out, so I asked "Could you be more specific?" Clearly annoyed and a bit anxious the woman gave a sudden but matter of fact response "I put an ibuprofen on it!"

It was at that moment that I noticed an Advil on the woman's shoulder, so I figured (given her age) she was simply confused, so I responded "Oh, ma'am, there's an Advil on your shoulder!" I figured she would understand that she was confused about leaving her pill on the pizza but she just gave me a look like I had just said something outrageously stupid. I plucked the pill from her shoulder to show her, but she was still insistent on finding her pizza. She began to leave the theater with her daughter to search for her pizza and asked that I follow. I was still convinced that she was simply very confused, and I began to question the existence of her pizza. I followed quickly behind and again tried to explain that the pill on her shoulder meant that there was no pill on the pizza, but the women kept walking as if they didn't hear me. We came to a hallway by a staircase, and the woman insisted I put down the pills, which had suddenly multiplied by three. I was worried about the kitties eating the pills, but I put them down anyway to appease the woman. It was then that the woman saw a small orphan boy at the top of the stairs. Seemingly forgetting about her pizza, she asked the boy if he knew where her specific brand of soap was. The boy began to respond but was quickly cut short by the woman. "You should use soap, you're filthy!" The boy was completely shocked but remained polite, "Well I would ma'am, if I could afford it," the boy responded abashedly. "It's not like I want to be dirty. I would buy soap, it's just so expensive!" The woman still focused on her search ignored the boy and continued on her way.

I continued to follow the obnoxious woman and her daughter to grand steps outside the theater. They were large stone steps one might see outside a monumental but we were still in a much larger building. The steps were filled with the actors and the other members of the audience all waiting for the woman and her daughter. Apparently the woman did not make a good impression on anyone, and I was surprised to see the angry faces of the crowd with pizzas loaded in hands and ready to fire. Before I could say anything, the pizzas were launched, and the woman and her daughter were drenched in tomato sauce. Everyone apologized to me for getting the stairs messy, but I was just happy justice was served!