This is a story this guy Eric in class told today, but a little tweaked around you know....

I'm sitting here drinking, and the last thing I need to be reading is this blog I've got in front of me, about how to make eco-conscious purchases. First there's the "scary" statistic that women eat about a tube of lipstick a year. You know what, I also eat about three gallons of tar from smoking, about 4 houses full of toxic outright poisoned air from driving over 480 East Really Tall Bridge twice a day, about three tons of fucking CHICKEN. The last thing I'm worried about is a little coconut flavored, "raisin" colored, fatty paraffin.

I found out about five minutes ago that my house has switched landlords. The wonderful old lady who bothered me 4 times a year has passed possession of property to some place called Larry Craig Realty. Seriously, Larry Craig? Has you ever heard a more nasally, down on his luck, poker playing, ex-cokehead, Florida kind of name? With Leisure Suit Larry and Larry Flynt, I now have a permanent bias against Larrys everywhere except the bar we go to watch concerts at. For some reason, Larrys there are generally okay and just unfortunately named.

So check it out, I don't have a car right now. And the place I live is on the outskirts of a very small Ohio "college town", so public transportation is still considered a very socialist concept. I've called everyone I know and everyone I know is in class or working. These people, Larry Craig, call to tell me that my rent is due, like, today before 5pm. Nevermind the fact that no letter was posted to me, or any previous phone calls made. I'm gonna have to walk.

Like any sincere Ohio College Town, copyright 19twenty Oberlin, there are lots of stupid little hills. People bike around here all the time, and I really have a lot of respect for that, but I don't own a bike. At least with a bike you are moving faster than SOMETHING. Walking, you are slower than everything. The distance to this place, according to Google Maps, is approximately 3 miles. That is 2.5 miles more than I have ever walked in my life. On top of that, its raining. Not warm summer muggy rain, which would be unbearable in its own way, but cold stingy rain. In less than half an hour, I am soaked through to the bones.

I walk. And I walk. And I walk. Putting one foot in front of the other becomes the sole focus of my external awareness, like a field sobriety test from hell. I concentrate on my feet so that I don't feel the pain in my fingers, the pain in my toes, the pain in my cheekbones, the pain in my nose. Footstep after footstep, it becomes increasingly harder to not draw attention to my very sore heels and the balls of my toes. But I hustle onward, there is no other path for me.

Finally I come to this wet little brick building. A cheerless sign propped against the window welcomes me to Larry Craig Realty. I march my hunched and pale shadow into their beige and cream waiting room, accented by an accident of 1976 file cabinet green. The effect is strangely pleasing, like an office at 60 Minutes. I really liked Ed Bradley by the way. He was an icon of my childhood. Looking at the dried up woman at the front desk, her childhood icon was probably Loni Anderson. I hand her my check, and then she tells me they're closing up. Meaning, I have to head back into the rain.

Back outside, I look around me, scouting possible locations, weighing my possibilities. I could try to walk home again. I could. I'm not going to though. I am flat out straight no way going to walk home.

I spot a pizza place. My mind shifts around, groping for a concept to hold onto. A plan emerges half developed. This is the place where if you buy one pizza, you get two free. The kind no one wants to get until your tastebuds are sufficiently drunk enough. Gathering my wits, I start the hurried stroll towards the door. Inside it's well lit, making everything on me just seem wetter. I walk over to the delivery guy folding boxes in a corner and I say,

"If I order two pizzas delivered, will you give me a ride home?"





He goes to talk to his boss.

He comes back and says, "Okay, sure."

As we're waiting for the pizzas to be made, he gets another load of deliveries. He says, "You know what, since we would just give these away to someone else, why don't we just get going, you can just have these."
He's really a pretty nice guy. So we drive back in his pickup truck, me with eight hot pizzas on my lap, me begging him to let me deliver just one. And he dropped me off. And ever since then, whenever someone protests ordering from that place, I tell them they have to.