The first thing you need to know is this: for my son, Clyde, pizza is like crack. No, he doesn’t smoke it. And, as of yet, he hasn’t started stealing stuff to pay for it. But he does have the same obsessive, paranoid attitude toward his pizza that I imagine crackheads have toward their stash. Which means that, as far as Clyde is concerned, no matter how much pizza there is, there’s still never enough to go around. When it comes to the pie there is not, and never can be, enough. Certainly not enough to share.
Bearing that in mind, I wasn’t too surprised the other night when I saw him walk into the bathroom with some pizza: of course he would never trust the rest of us enough to just leave his pizza sitting there, waiting for his return—even though we had gotten five (five!) pizzas that night. And I wasn’t too surprised to see him go in there with not only one piece of pizza, but with two—one in each hand. And I wasn’t even surprised when, a few minutes later he came walking back out, still holding the same pieces of pizza (it had been a quick trip). I was a little disgusted, though, because he was still holding one in each hand, and that immediately led me to the question of what had he done with both of those slices while he was attending to business? Because I’m assuming he didn’t just go in there to check his hair. And that was when I realized, as I often belatedly do, that I really didn’t want to know.
He set them on the sink, I told myself firmly. He set them on the sink. Maybe if I repeated it enough times I would start to believe it, but considering that I had just that morning had to stop him from licking the bottom of his shoe, I had my doubts.
I used to be proud of the fact that my kids weren’t afraid of a little filth: the way they were the only kids at the campfire that would not only pick up their own hot dog and eat when it fell on the ground, but pick up other people’s as well. I started to question the wisdom of being proud of such a thing, however, the time one of them picked a hot dog up from off the ground and started eating it and we hadn’t brought any hot dogs—or other people—camping with us. Or the time one of them came strolling out of their room eating a piece of pizza, and we hadn’t ordered pizza for over a week.
Which brings us back to Clyde’s recent pizza multi-tasking.
I have to admit that it definitely wasn’t the grossest thing I’ve ever seen go into a bathroom—that honor goes to a former room-mate of mine who liked to eat his Frosted Flakes on the toilet every morning (at least it wasn’t Cocoa Puffs). And it also wasn’t the grossest thing I’ve ever seen come out of a bathroom, either. We live in an older house, with older plumbing, so believe me, I’ve seen more gross things come out from under the bathroom door than through it. (If I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget hearing the words, “When did we get a brown carpet for the bathroom?”)
But Clyde’s stunt was certainly the grossest thing I’ve ever seen both go in, and then come out. And it was all because of Clyde’s love of the pie. I suppose people have done worse things because of their addictions—at least I’ve never come home to find Clyde passed out amongst a stack of empty pizza boxes and an empty spot where my TV used to be.
Yet.