Special Delivery

Don't ask. It was a wonderful day in my world. I'll spare you the sex and violence and just tell you that my car broke down. I've taken it to the same place several hundred times over the past four months and something is always going wrong. It's worse than chasing the March Hare down the rabbit hole - more like trying to grab liquid mercury with boxing gloves. My car is the heavyweight champion of mechanical malingerers - so why is it me that ends up with the headaches?

I came home and dealt with this latest unfortunate expense in the only way I knew how. I took a nap. It was one of those guilt-free naps where you know you have nothing to do later that day other than check the scores on ESPN, order a pizza, and maybe change the toilet paper roll. Speaking of ordering pizza, that's exactly what I did after I peeled myself off the bed. I saw a commercial where they put an entire side of beef on a pizza - and you can get the other side added for $2 more. Seeing as the only contributions I made to the food nutrition pyramid so far today were some chips and something called a watermelon cocktail while my car was getting a shiatsu, I decided to put a bullet into the chamber and called my local franchised pizza chain. I gave my order and address and repeat my name about a dozen times ("Um, that's "K" as in "kinky", "E" as in "edible", "V" as in "virginal flesh"..."). They seldom ask me again after I spell it out like that. I don't eat onions, mushrooms or peppers. I just don't. Sure, I may have French onion soup, but at least the onions don't taste like onions there. Something about the texture and acrid spray of a freshly-crunched onion ranks a few slots below ipecac for me. Peppers? Well, there was a summer - one summer - where I went on a pepper-eating binge. Came out of nowhere. I was gobbling jalapenos and guzzling hot sauce like I was competing for a position on the Olympic team. Then, I met a habanero. My eyes watered and I wiped them with my fingers. They swelled shut like walnuts. Summer of the Pepper was over. As far as mushrooms are concerned, I won't eat anything that grows naked in cow feces without the benefit of a skin or husk - especially not fungus that grows naked in cow feces.

Now, for pizza toppings I do like, well, color me carnivorous. The Flesh-Eaters Pizza definitely appeals to me. It has everything the average American glutton could want: steak, ground beef, pepperoni, chicken, mutton, lobster, bacon, fried cuttlefish, ass...pretty much any once-breathing animal tissue. However, I'm not a big sausage fan (insert sophomoric snicker here). Those little caraway seeds, or whatever the hell you call them, are disgusting. Biting into one of them tastes like that piece of chicken that was lodged between your molars over the weekend. You know the one that you tried to dislodge with your tongue several hundred times but couldn't, so you used pen caps, envelope corners and elastic from a tube sock to pry it loose. I always have to watch myself when I tell the girl taking my order to "hold the sausage" when I order the Flesh-Eaters Pizza in case she makes a call and two goliaths in dark suits come banging down my door and make me register as a sex offender.

My success rate for ordering hovers around 75% - that is to say that my order gets screwed up about 25% of the time. I'm not sure if I am above or below the national average, but feel free to conduct your own study. 90% of the time the order is snafu-ed by, you guessed it, onions, mushrooms and/or peppers. It gets to the point where I have to say when I am ordering, "Yes, I'd like to order the enormo-pizza with ham and black olives but no onions, mushrooms or peppers because I am allergic and it will cause me to die a little. Then, I would have to sue your company, and you personally, so that you will only have enough money to fashion clothes out of dryer lint. Now I'm going to put my attorney on the line to get a statement." Sometimes you have to play hardball to get what you ordered.

And talk about quick delivery! "Yes, we'll be there in 45 minutes to an hour - or however long it takes for our driver to stop by his girlfriend's apartment, get a quick handjob and bong hit and finally make it to your house as the sun starts peeking over the horizon." By this time, your hunger has taken hold of you and you're no longer a thinking, rational human being - you're an eating machine. Cheesesteak is cold? Hell with it. French fries soggy? No problem. Pizza cheese whipped violently to one side of the pie so that it resembles the face of a Dick Tracy villain? Dealt with. As the great philosopher,Socrates once said, "Pizza is like sex - when it's hot it's good. When it's cold, it's still good." I always was a sucker for the classics.

I'm sure the life of a delivery person is a bit interesting. You get to travel, eat for free, and have interesting people shove guns in your face. Also, let us not forget the bountiful opportunities to have mammoth-chested hot girls answering the door naked and telling you they don't have money for a tip but asking if there is anything they can do in place of one. Now, if food delivery people don't have that carrot on the stick, I've been watching the wrong movies. It's not a bad way to make a few extra quid if you need the money or just have a jones for driving fast and helping yourself to someone else's french fries. Just keep your tank filled, your muffler noisy and your music loud.

And keep it out of the shop.