Pizza Math

First, I apologize for my lack of blogs over the past month.  Really, nothing interesting has been going on, and I don’t want to bore you with mundane stuff like “Today Ben was in China and I stayed in bed all day feeling sorry for myself and watching 90210 re-runs.”  Even our lunches have been pretty tame for the past few weeks.  Yesterday, however, there was finally some blog-worthy action.

Bob and I met Ben for lunch yesterday at Gondolier on Chapman Highway.  We go to Gondolier quite frequently, and depending on the “pizza math” (i.e., how many people are eating that day vs. how many slices in the pizza), we always order either a medium or large pizza (or two mediums if we have 4 people), and everyone gets a soft drink.  We always ask the waitress to split the bill evenly between us, and usually that’s not a problem. 

Yesterday, however, it was a big problem.  We asked the waitress to split the bill 2/3 for me and Ben and 1/3 for Bob.  She got an extremely confused look on her face and said, “Okay, what I’ll do is put half on your bill and half on his.”  No, that’s not really what we wanted.  Seeing that this was confusing for her, I said, “Just split it in three equal shares and we’ll all pay separately.”  Then she said, “Oh, I see what you’re saying.  I’ll put ¼ on his and the rest on yours.”  What?  No!  Do you even know what ¼ is?  Do you see four people here?  Hellfire.  “No, that’s okay.  Just split it three ways and we’ll all pay separately.”  Obviously, math is not her strong suit.

During the meal, she was talking to some people at the table behind us, telling them that her and her husband’s tenth anniversary was coming up and that they were going to the beach.  “I’m not sure if it’s Myrtle Beach or not, but it’s somewhere in North Carolina.”  Hmm.  Geography also is not her strong suit.

We got to the end of the meal, she brought the checks (one for me and Ben and one for Bob) and said, “Okay, what I did was put half on yours and half on his, so that should work out right.”  Umm, no.  I just took Bob’s check and paid for everything, and Bob gave me cash.  Thankfully, we are decent at math, so we were able to figure out how much he owed me.  If any of my former math teachers is reading this, please feel free to use this story as an example when a snot-nosed kid in your class says, “I don’t see why we have to learn this stuff – I’ll never use it!”  I was tempted to order another pizza so I could give a visual lesson on fractions (“I have three pieces of pizza.  Please show me how you can divide it in half without maiming one of the slices.”).

To round out the lunch excursion, I had to take Bob by the Chapman Highway Wal-Mart so he could pick up something at his bank (which is inside Wal-Mart).  I, of course, refused to actually go inside Wal-Mart because that always causes my blood pressure to go through the roof and might someday cause me to leave Wal-Mart in either an ambulance or a police car.  In an effort to avoid either scenario, I dropped Bob off at the door and circled the parking lot while I waited for him to come back out.  I should note that this is not a sure-fire method for avoiding the ambulance or police car scenario, as sometimes I get just as angry in the parking lot as I do in the store.  This time, however, it worked out okay. 

At one point, I was sitting at the end of one of the aisles waiting for traffic to pass when a lady drove past in an old green Chevy Lumina.  The lady appeared to be in her mid-to-late 60s and was paying a lot of attention to the cigarette she was smoking.  She was paying so much attention to the cigarette, in fact, that she did not realize that her driver's side rear door was wide open.  All of her groceries and other Wal-Mart goods were sitting on the back seat, and the rear door was standing wide open as she drove through the Wal-Mart parking lot.  While laughing hysterically, I quickly made the executive decision that Bob was going to have to wait for me if he came out of Wal-Mart in the next few minutes, because I was going to follow this lady and see how long it would take for her to knock the door off on something (including a passing car if she made it out to Chapman Highway).  I also was trying desperately to get my phone out of my purse so that I could take a picture.  Sadly, however, before anything more exciting happened, a good Samaritan walking through the parking lot yelled at the lady, ran up to the car, and shut the door.  Sigh.  The moral of this story is that I should ALWAYS have my phone in-hand in case such an opportunity ever arises again.