Paul's Pizza

Part of the thing that sucks about being down in the dumps is that nothing seems interesting; even things that actually are. I’ve doing a lot of blog reading lately and found I was getting tired of reading the some ol’ blogs, so I started looking around at some new ones. There are so many to chose from! I’d seen Sara Brown’s blog before, but I hadn’t read it in a while, so I decided to revisit it. Wah – la! I found inspiration. In one of her posts she talks about a friend who dressed up like a piece of pizza. That reminded me of Paul.

Like most kids, Paul always liked to play dress up. He had a red, felt, dinosaur costume he wore out after wearing it everyday for two years. It didn’t matter if it didn’t fit anymore. It didn’t even matter if it was 110 degrees outside and his sweaty little face was as red as the costume, Paul loved it. He also had a pirate costume and a Cat in the Hat costume I made for him myself. He slept in his Cpt Jean Luke Picard custom for a year. (Well, they do sort of look like PJs!)

But my favorite costume Paul ever had was one he picked up himself. I can’t remember how old he was; maybe 7 or 8, when he walked into the house and asked if he could have two dollars. “What for?” I asked him. He wouldn’t tell me, but he did inform me he had been at a yard sale down the street and he had found something he wanted. I figured two bucks wasn’t too much, so I handed him the money and he ran out the door.

A little while later I heard the screen door banging and someone fumbling for the door. As I rounded the corner I saw Paul carefully stepping sideways through the door wearing a large cardboard box cut and decorated like a giant piece of pizza. His arms struggled to hold the box up as he walked, and his head poked from a hole in the top. “I’m a piece of pizza!” he announced proudly, his little face beaming with pride. I just cracked up.

Paul stumbled around in that costume until at last Halloween came he was able to be piece of pizza for real. Every person at every door we knocked on laughed when they saw Paul’s costume. I’m pretty sure he scored big time in candy that night.

The pizza costume remained in Paul’s room for the next few following years. Occasionally he would put it on again and bump around the house singing, “I’m a pizza!” just to make me laugh.

As you can see, things haven’t changed much.