The General Orders a Pizza

It was a couple months ago. October, I think. Before the Democratic primaries kicked into high gear. Some friends and I were enjoying pizza and beer at Patsy's on the Upper West Side. Good pizza. Good beer.

A guy walks in, a group of people around him. That's the first thing that tells you he's important: he's in the center of the group. It rotates around him as he walks, but maintains him in the center, not too tough to do on an empty sidewalk, but a bit of a challenge in the narrow aisles between tables at Patsy's. Putting that kind of effort into it, into maintaining the rotating human shield around this guy, that's a sure indicator of importance. The other is his posture, a plumb-line-from-crown-to-ass chiropractic achievement that calls to my mind the phrase "ramrod straight," even though I don't know what a ramrod is.

General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, has come for pizza.

At that moment in time, I have no idea who General Wesley Clark is. I don't read the newspapers, or watch the news. I'm not a registered Democrat. I'm not a member of NATO. My friends, however, at least watch the news, and are duly impressed by the sudden appearance of the General. They fill me in. I am duly impressed that, in this day and age, someone can officially be the Supreme Commander of anything. It sounds like a title from STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. One that the Klingons would use.

The thought then occurs to me: how exactly does a four-star general, a man who could have formerly, on a whim, order the total conquest and subjagation of, say, Finland, order a pizza? It certainly doesn't seem like a task the General would delegate to one of his flunkies, something of such importance. I mean, it's not just his own pizza he's ordering, but for the entire table, a party of at least a dozen people. That kind of responsibility is something that just isn't left to subordinates.

I have to imagine the order as one of the most militaristic kind, fired off with the deadly serious stacato of a machine gun: "Four pies. One pepperoni-sausage. One mushroom-green pepper. One white. One plain. Four pitchers Michelob. ASAP." A far cry, certainly, from my own table's ragged, rambling suggestions of what we might like, should the waitress be so kind, interrupted by the occasional pathetic request of the "Could we have half-anchovies on that?" sort. There's no such sloppiness at the General's table, I'm sure, no dissention, no doubt.

The tables at Patsy's are small, and the pies are large. The arrival of three vague pizzas at our own table is an occasion fraught with panic and disorder, as the sorry remainder of the two large salads we'd ordered to whet our collective appetite are hastily divied up, the empty bowls first offered to the waitress' already occupied hands, then placed on the floor (the floor, I tell you!) for later retrieval. Water glasses are shoved aside to make room, one being upset in the process and subsequently flooding the southwestern quadrant of Table One, a disaster only magnified by an inadequate supply of napkins and the diversion of said table's occupants' attention by the pizzas whose very presence is wreaking such havok. This was a planned, anticipated event, and even still, the delivery is enough to cause pandemonium amongst our bewildered forces.

The General, I knew, was far better prepared. The salad was divided up on its arrival, minimizing the amount of time and space wasted on the presence of its overly large bowls. Glasses, both water and beer, were lined in neat, spit-shined rows, ready for inspection. Roles in the forthcoming operation would be assigned; training would be brief, but instructive. Orders would be issued. The insertion and deployment of four large pizzas onto three small, otherwise occupied tables, as daunting as it might seem, would present little challenge to the man who invaded Haiti, who defeated Milosovec, who ended the war in Bosnia. Operation Pie-in-the-Sky would be one in which every occupant of the table would be proud, indeed, honored to take part.

I find myself fervently hoping that the General doesn't walk past our table. Indeed, my sudden but overwhelming shame at my own table and its occupants is now starting to seriously detract from what had been, prior to the General's landing, a perfectly enjoyable dining experience.

Luckily, at this apex of my dismay, Michael Moore, of slumped spine and not-so-fit bearing, comes in with a severe, frowning woman who could only be his mother, sits down at the table next to ours, and proceeds to lower his head and stare at his plate in the instantly recognizable shame of a boy forced to dine in public with a disapproving parent, and I start to feel much better.