Mary Ann and the Pizza Box

It was early evening in late summer. Mary Ann and I had been playing for most of the afternoon and had worked up quite an appetite. Unfortunately, nothing in her parents' fridge nor cupboards sounded appealing. Worse yet, Mary Ann was grounded. We weren't even supposed to be playing together. Oh, the dilemma. We quickly calculated the time and decided that we could get away with ordering pizza, devouring it, and discarding the evidence before her parents returned. So we ordered a large cheese pizza and waited anxiously. The delivery man handed us two pizzas instead of just the one. "We made a mistake and put pepperoni on it. Sorry, that's our fault. So we threw in an extra pizza for free. Sorry."

Things were going better than planned. We finished off both pizzas and sat laughing and talking on her living room floor. Then, interrupting our carefree banter, the sound of the garage door rumbled throughout the house. Wide eyes met, frozen for a mere second before we both bolted to our feet and scurried like mice. Mary Ann shoved me towards the back sliding glass door. I started to bee-line to my yard two houses down when I turned and saw Mary Ann's dad watching me from his car. I froze in my tracks, watching him watch me. I started to think up some story I could tell him, some reason for my running from his house just then... when the plausability of any story I could invent was demolished as a pizza box came flying through the air, spinning like a pinwheel until it rested at my feet. I slowly reached down, picked up the box, and walked home.

Mary Ann later told me that her dad wasn't even that upset. He said, "At least you are hanging out with Emilie. I wish you would be more like her." Somehow, the fact that I was disregarding his rules had escaped his notice. He had made up a better story for me than I could have... and the moral of his story was that "Emilie is a good influence on my daughter." Hey, it was his choice. I was ok with that.

Shortly after the pizza box incident, another friend and I went on a trip to Seattle. I listened to Tori Amos on the plane there and back, and I remember listening to the song "Marianne" and getting sentimental knowing that my own Mary Ann might be moving. Her dad had lost his job and was looking for a new one. In the end, Maryanne didn't move. I was able to influence her for awhile longer for better or for worse.

I'm just having thoughts of Marianne
Quickest girl in the frying pan