Single girls never ask me for relationship advice. I don't know if that's because they've seen pictures of my poofy '80s wedding or what.
But if they did, I would tell them to marry the guy who always offers to call to order the pizza. More than a good provider, a generous, selfless family man, or even the hottest dad at the neighborhood block party, if a guy routinely says, "I'll order. What do you want?" you put a ring on that, fast.
Because the guy who always orders the pizza is the guy who will call the babysitter, cancel the paper before vacation, call tree trimmers for estimates, and other things that we look around for others to do.
I would rather clean Port-a-Johns at Beer-n-Brats Fest than pick up the phone and dial the number for a pizza. I've proven that I'd rather make a three-course meal from scratch, using dishes that will have me hand-washing delicate cookware at the sink for hours after everyone's finished eating, rather than make one phone call to Dominos and use paper plates.
It all comes down to my not wanting to be a bother. I have this deep-seated feeling that the pizza makers are otherwise engaged in some important but enjoyable project, and that when the phone rings and it's me asking for a 10-inch with peppers and mushrooms, they're going to be all, "Oh man, it's her! She wants pizza! My god, woman, what do you think this is? Do you think we have nothing better to do than to take pizza orders, fulfill them, and deliver them for the cost that we advertised and shove in your door and mailbox hole on a weekly basis?"
The assistant manager chimes in, "Oh, and she wants it delivered to her house! Next she'll want us to come in and feed it to her. She's quite helpless, this one, isn't she?"
When I call for pizza, I have to stop myself from saying, "I hate to bother you, but if you have time, could you possibly . . . " My tone of voice says it all, though. And I all but plead with them to take my credit card.
"Thank you!" I gush, when they say, yes, of course, they're a huge operation and would be morons if they only accepted cash and checks in this day and age.
I resisted getting a cleaning service for a long time for similar reasons. "I just feel like these women have better things to do than come over here and clean the house of some lazy ass woman," I told my friend.
"Diane, it's what they do. They're cleaners. They want the work. They don't want you to clean your own house." Oh right. Like I didn't hear culo perezoso, por favor over the vacuum.
"You do know you have to pay them?" she asked, warily. "You're not asking them to volunteer, right?"
I have passed this trait onto my daughter, who last week proposed that we order food from Uncle Vito's, despite the homemade baked macaroni and cheese I was taking out of the oven.
"We could get those really good salads and have them with the mac and cheese tonight," she reasoned, "and then I could get some pasta to have when you're away this weekend." She was bringing up Uncle Vito's menu on the laptop.
That sounded like a splendid idea to me. And then she gave me her order.
"Wait, I thought you were calling," I said.
"Ew. I hate to call. You call," she said.
You would have thought we were drawing straws to decide who would call Uncle Vito to tell him his dog died.
In the end I agreed to order the food if she carried two big piles of photo albums back up to the fourth floor bookshelf. I would have added some more heavy lifting but I couldn't think of anything fast enough.
If you can't find a guy who will order pizza, at least get one who will carry things upstairs for you.
