Life Is a Pizza
I love my kids. I love reading to them, playing with them,
watching them grow up, listening to them talk, teaching them
to ride bikes, taking them to the beach, and generally hanging
out with them.
Mind you, I hate picking up after them, listening to them
squabble, and being spoken to in that dismissive way that only
teenagers can really do justice to. But I can’t seem to have the
good bits without the picking up, the squabbles, and the sharp
end of a teenager’s tongue from time to time. I wouldn’t be
without them, though (most days).
I love pizza, too. I love crispy pizzas, and I like the soft
squishy ones. Any pizza really. I love peperoni and mozzarella
and tomatoes and juicy chunks of ham and piquant capers and
crispy onions. Mind you, I hate olives, and they sometimes
appear on pizzas without being ordered. Disgraceful. And
those dried up tomatoes you sometimes get. The ones that are
all chewy. Ugh! I always pick those off and throw them away.
When my kids were little, they’d refuse to eat a pizza that had
something they didn’t like on it. They’d burst into tears and
sob, “I hate mushrooms!” or “I can’t stand cooked tomatoes!”
They had to learn that, if they couldn’t work round the mush-
rooms or cooked tomatoes, they couldn’t have pizza at all.
Yo u k n o w w h a t I ’ m g o i n g t o s a y. Ye s , l i f e i s a p i z z a , w i t h e v e r y-
thing on it. If you want the good bits, you have to deal with
the bad bits. If you love everything about your job apart from
one person you don’t like dealing with, recognize that the job
comes as a package and you buy into it or quit the job. If you