Why I’m not currently eating a pizza
A couple days ago, I was starving so I went to my dorm kitchen and scrounged through the freezer. I don’t tend to keep things in the fridge because that sort of stuff can go bad and I can’t juggle all these things like expiration dates in my memory. This is a recurring theme that will be explored later.
I took out some breaded cauliflower cheese grills (CCGs) that I had been saving for just such a special occasion (extreme desperation), and as I took them out of the freezer, I noticed a delicious frozen pizza. As I was putting the CCGs in the oven, I realized that the pizza was actually mine. I considered taking the CCGs out of the oven and cooking the pizza, but it was too late to second guess myself.
This got me thinking to the next time I would be hungry so I could eat that pizza. I remembered that it cost £1.00, which I thought was quite the deal, so I decided I would try to purchase more if they were still £1.00.
I set my alarm clock to go off when the CCGs were ready. I’ve been doing this for years now because as I’ve mentioned, my memory leaves something to be desired, specifically personal safety.
Three years ago, I used to make these Indian pizza bagels all the time. They’re Indian because I used masala sauce on them instead of tomato sauce. I don’t remember why. I made them just about every day. It become so common that I realized I didn’t need to keep setting my alarm every time I made them.
One day, back three years ago, I was sitting in my room and the fire alarm went off. I was living in a spare room of an apartment at the time, and I never evacuated for fire alarms. I was on the second floor, so if worst came to worse, I could jump out my window and forever be considered a bad-ass from then on out. Everyone should have a bad-ass fire safety plan. Usually, the alarm would turn off after a little while, but this one just kept going. I was getting really pissed off. After God knows how long, it eventually stopped and I went back to playing Desktop Tower Defense or whatever in peace.
The next day when I emerged from my room to go to the shared kitchen, I noticed a completely burnt object sitting on the counter. It must have been what had set the fire alarm off, but it was odd that it was just left on the counter and not thrown out.
A few days went by, and the burnt object was still sitting on the counter whenever I cooked my Indian pizza bagels. I was getting a bit pissed off at the people I was living with because they still hadn’t thrown it out. About thirty minutes later, I remembered that I had left the pizza bagels in the oven and rushed to pull them out. They had only burnt a little bit, but I looked at them and then looked to the burnt object on the counter. There was a striking resemblance to the shape and color. I quietly put the burnt object in the trash.
What happened, if you couldn’t extrapolate, is that I had put an Indian pizza bagel in the oven and completely forgot about it. I didn’t forget about it temporarily; I completely erased it from my mind. Even after the fire alarm went off for an hour and being faced with the charred remains every day, my memory remained unjogged. One of my flatmates must have had to fight the fire I started and left the evidence out for me to see.
Since then, I always set my alarm when I cook. Sometimes I look at it as it’s going off, wondering what I must be cooking.
So back to my CCGs. I went in to check on them half-way through their cooking time, and I noticed that the bottom-left electric hob (the top cooking surface on a cooker) was on full power with nothing atop it. The dial was switched to off, so I was utterly confused. I tried turning it every which way, but it remained at full power. I considered attempting to move my CCGs to the other oven, but it really was too late to second guess myself. Instead, I decided to write a note for my future self and tape it over the oven power switch. I often notice the oven power switch turned off, which annoys me to no end, and I didn’t want my future self to find it off and angrily turn it back on to end up lighting a kitchen rag or something on fire. My note was a detailed account of what was wrong and why it was dangerous. I’d understand. When my CCGs were done, I flipped the power switch off and covered it with the note.
These dorm ovens look like they cost about the same as my pizzas, but today, when I went into my kitchen to make a pizza, there was a repairman fiddling with the broken oven. Someone must have read my note and decided to report it. Whoever got that report decided it would be economical to fix the ancient broken oven instead of just buying a new one. Now there’s a Scottish man in my kitchen taking apart the back of the oven. I like my Scottish people like I like Kanye West: Neither seen nor heard. I’m naturally reluctant to have conversations with strangers, which is something Scottish people are not. Also, I have trouble understanding people with accents different than mine. I was once at the airport with Becca in a queue behind a couple with a double-sized baby carriage. An airport worker of Middle Eastern descent approached us and said, “Twins? Twins?”. I looked at her blankly and handed her our tickets and passports. Also, every time I go to this health store Holland & Barrett, the cashier asks if I want their fitness magazine and I look at them blankly and hand them my money. I keep Becca with me when I go out into the world because she sorts all that stuff out for me. Scottish people are the hardest to decipher, especially if they’re of the manual labor class. Getting in a taxi over here is excruciating. I can normally chuckle and say “yeah” to get me through most conversation, but they invariably end up asking a question that doesn’t take a yes or no answer and I’m left in a bind.
So as you can see, I try to avoid talking to Scottish people, especially those of the manual labor class, at any cost. That cost is currently going into my kitchen to put a pizza in the oven. He should be done by now.
