Pizza in the Costco Parking Lot

As a New Yorker transplanted to the Midwest, I can tell you there are many differences between where I grew up and where I live now. Over the years, I’ve adjusted to most of those differences, but occasionally one still sneaks up on me. The most recent? Sliced pizza. 

I was having a particularly difficult day where everything was going wrong, and all I wanted was a slice of pizza. Do you know how difficult it is to get a single slice of pizza in Indiana? 

In New York? Pizza places are as numerous as gas stations. In fact, many gas stations are pizza places that serve fresh pizza by the slice. 

In my 16 years living here, I hadn’t really considered this issue. But this particular day, the total wasteland of freshly sliced pizza was all I could think (and rant) about. In response to my diatribe, my friend calmly said, “Well, other than Costco, obviously.” 

“Wait!” I said. “Costco! Costco has pizza by the slice!”

I swung a U-turn right there and headed to the suburbs. I strode into Costco, walked with purpose to the cafeteria kiosks, and handed over $4. Within minutes, I held two giant slices of pizza in my hands.

I didn’t want to eat in the store because it was a nice early-summer night. So I went out to the parking lot, hopped awkwardly up on the trunk of my car (see hands full of pizza), and bit into my pepperoni slices with abandon, grease dripping down my chin. I kicked my feet against the car and watched the birds fly overhead. I listened to the cars zoom by on the highway. It was possibly the most New York thing I’ve done in years. 

And people stared. Like, a lot of people.

Then one particularly harried-looking woman strode by, pushing a cart piled high. We made eye contact, so I gave her a big, cheesy grin. She sighed and said wistfully, “I wish I was doing that!”

All I could do with a mouth full of pizza was give her a little wave, but otherwise I would have said, “Well, why aren’t you?”

Why aren’t we all taking a few minutes to eat pizza in the Costco parking lot? To drink coffee in the backyard? To pick a blade of grass and try to make it sound like a kazoo? Why do we let the stress and normal day-to-day life keep us from kicking our heels against the car while we watch the sun set over a suburban shopping center?

On a practical level, I know why it happens. But I want to try to resist that stress, that monotony. I want to eat more pizza in the Costco parking lot. 

What was the last thing you did that felt like that?