Food Thievery

Okay, so my house is gonna hate me for posting this, but to do anything other than write about the private business of 63A Home, at this point, would be to sacrifice my journalistic integrity - which is important ;).

Recently, our house experienced an incident of food "theft" from the refrigerator. I put theft in quotes because, well you'll see in a moment . . .

Anyway, someone - he's asked to remain anonymous - took a slice of pizza from the refrigerator last weekend. Admittedly, it was a pretty good-sized slice of Illiano's buffalo chicken pizza (a good one if you haven't tried it before), but we were hungry, he was out of points, and let's face it, good food is hard to come by at this point in the semester. So he had a slice of pizza, saying, "I hope Dave isn't gonna be mad I ate some of his pizza." Boy was he wrong . . .


Dave sent us this email mere hours later:

Hi guys,

When I came home last night, I brought home 5 remaining
slices from a pizza I had ordered last night.
That was meant to last me for a couple days. I'm
completely out of points, and I've been
reducing to one meal a day most days. I've shared a lot
of food with the house, but I really wanted this
pizza just for myself. I just went to the
fridge, and there were 2 slices left.

Please, in the future, do not take food that
isn't yours without asking. It's a really shit
surprise. And, if it was you who took it, that
pizza was $21 for 8 slices, so if you want to be
responsible about it, give me $5 to
supplement it with something. I'm not
trying to squeez you out here, I'm
just looking at no food for tonight / tomorrow.

~David

What was that? I mean, I guess it sucks to open the fridge looking for something tasty, and find like, nothing there. But then again, something was still in there wasn't it? Aren't people starving in Iraq or whatever, like, right now? Is a slice of pizza really all that serious?

And that reminds me of another issue: the number of slices that went missing. Dave came home with 5 slices, he says, yet he says that he opened the box the next day and . . . BAM! Only two slices!
Now, unless something mystical is going on (ghosts? pizza elves?), basic arithmetic suggests that someone in the house must have eaten 3 of Dave's pizza slices. Who could have eaten all that pizza? I know I didn't have any, and Andres has been in the library a lot recently, and wasn't at the house much when the whole "pizza issue" came up a couple of days ago. And I was there when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named ate a slice of the pizza pie; I saw it all happen, and it was only one slice! I asked him about it later, and he confirmed: that slice that I saw him eat was the only slice that he ate. The whole house is getting their inbox's flooded over one slice of pizza! (Dave, I'm sorry, but assuming everyone is telling the truth, you're either exaggerating or don't remember all the pizza you ate. You're not a bad person, but this email, I have to say, was just a little ridiculous. We still like you though, in a totally manly, distant and platonic way).

Houses generally only have one refrigerator, which is fine if you live by yourself, yet when a single-person home becomes two or more, when your house becomes our house, when, in short, you have roommates, you have to share some of the stuff that ends up in the refrigerator. No one really complains about sharing condiments, spices, onions - that sort of thing, but when it comes to leftovers, prepackaged food, and stuff we'd consider "expensive", people get territorial. Pizza, you have to admit, is kind of expensive. But then, it's pizza. Everyone likes pizza; everyone shares pizza. The so-called "personal pan" pizza is a perversion of pizza's true nature: a pie that everyone can take a part of. Leave something like that in the refrigerator and it's bound to get taken up by someone. You wouldn't leave a pile of gold outside of a department store, and not expect people to take it. Leave a fresh pizza pie around hungry people, and unless you write "Hands Off Man!" on top of the box (in which case people will think you're a greedy son-of-a-donkey, but leave the pie alone), then there's a good chance that someone else is gonna eat it.
And also, Dave, not to be too blunt here, but when was the last time you really bought something that was for the whole house? Most of your food is prepackaged or takeout, so people hardly ever touch it. The only thing I can think of right now is the lemonade you bought last week, which you left upstairs so it could get cool in the snow, then brought downstairs once it was almost gone. I'll admit that I broke the rule of thumb by drinking the last of the lemonade, but then again I was halfway done pouring when I noticed that there was only enough left for my glass. And the only thing worse than someone taking all your stuff, is when they leave only the last dregs of the container so they can say that they did not drink the whole thing.
Still, I felt kind of bad, and was planning on going to Weshop later to buy more juice. These plans changed, however, when I told you that I drank the last of the lemonade. Now, I know you're out of points, and probably bought that lemonade with cash, yet before I was able to tell you that I still had some points, and would buy some more juice later, you said, "So, you're gonna buy the next container of lemonade huh?" What?!? Now, if I was in the habit of drinking your juice, then that would be one thing. But I buy juice for the house all the time, and I always share it with you and the rest of the house. This was definitely the first time you had ever bought juice for the house. I don't feel obligated to buy more just because I drank the last pulpy recesses of the container. (I mentioned this, in part, to Dave, and he responded saying, "I ate your sausage yesterday, and you had my lemonade. Okay" Wait a second! I gave you that sausage because you asked for it. It wasn't a trade - though if it was, juice doesn't seem to hold up all that well to meat. Also, what about all that other lemonade that you drank, that I gave without expecting anything back. And what about those $4.00 fries that I gave you practically untouched because you wanted them so much?! Not that anybody's counting!). I'm sure you have contributed to the house in ways I cannot think of right now, but as far as all this food you've allegedly shared with the house, the only thing I can think of right now is that juice and those Splenda packets you bought at the beginning of the year. I'll probably buy some more juice, though it won't be with the same feelings of altruism and good, holiday cheer.


Yet, I digress. After finishing the email (I didn't read it until Sunday), I was planning on writing Dave to tell him that I had made a whole bunch of Marinara-and-sausage sauce, and that he was welcome to have some since I was having trouble finishing it. I completely forgot about this, however, after surfing through Andres and Taul's* responses. Andres wrote this:

First, someone takes a tube of toothpaste. Now, someone
has taken more than half of David's food. The bathroom and
kitchen are the main common spaces of the house and a
re susceptible to theft.

It is now a pattern of theft, I've noticed. The question
that remains is who the thief is.


A O O

Theft? Ouch, that hurts. The only possible culprits in our house of four were Taul and I, and honestly, I don't think I was suspected at all in this "pattern of theft". Andres was already upset with Taul for reasons I probably shouldn't go into on the internet; he had already confronted him about the toothpaste. What if the toothpaste was stolen? What if a thief (or a toothpaste elf) was in our mist, lusting after our material possessions with greedy eyes. For a moment, the world seemed all topsy-turvy, toothpaste and pizza going missing from right under our noses. For one illogical moment, it all seemed possible. Then I remembered that I had already seen someone (okay, it was Taul) eating a slice of pizza, that Dave likely exaggerated the number of slices that were taken, and that I had already suggested that the toothpaste was probably misplaced, though nobody seemed to be listening. . .

Taul's response to Andres was really good, witty even, in a generic way. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want me to mention it on the web, unfortunately. Suffice it to say that Taul's last email to Andres began and ended in a one word conjunction: "you're"(Andres had misspelled the word in his previous email). Andres, for once, became the underdog and got totally shot down. Even Dave was like, "Yeah dude, we straightened that out already."

Taul, of course, took the pizza slice, but what happened to the toothpaste? Well, as I said before, I was always inclined to think that someone had misplaced it. People don't just go around stealing toothpaste do they? Especially not in your own house. Some careless arse had picked it up and just forgotten what he did with.
That thoughtless housemate, it turns out, was me. I have my own toothpaste that I keep in my room, and I usually take it in the bathroom, then bring it back out. My toothpaste is the same brand that's in the bathroom, however, and for some reason I took their toothpaste, put it in my room, forgot about it, and found it days later after it had resurfaced from the dark and forgotten depths behind my dresser.
So all in all, I was at the bottom of the toothpaste mystery. Me, myself, and I were the culprit. Who woulda thought eh? But in any case, problem solved. . .

Or is it????



P.S.- The last line is an inside joke, among other things. 63A Home, you know what I'm talkin' bout.

P.P.S.- That marinara sauce is still in the fridge. And it's not bad, I swear! Email me if you get hungry over finals week. We'll have a pasta party.



*Not his real name