One Saturday in 1974 I plan my eating day around the baked ziti at Mama’s, a little fast-Italian restaurant a couple of blocks from the New Yorker Theater on 89th St., where I’ll be seeing a movie all by myself, a recently discovered pleasure. It takes much longer than usual for the ziti, and by the time I get it I have five minutes before showtime. I ask for the ziti to be wrapped to-go. I’ll heat it up later.
I get so hungry during the coming attractions that I slip my hand into the warm bag, quietly unlock the cardboard top to the aluminum foil dish, and insert my finger into the mush, extricating a ziti and cheese, which I put into my mouth as if it were a piece of popcorn. It is among the best morsels ever to contact my taste buds. I lick the sauce clean from my finger. I do it one more time again and again and again.
Sometimes, I wonder how many people in the world are doing the same thing at the same time? How many are reading Thomas Wolfe after having forgotten he existed? How many are peeing with one hand while brushing teeth with the other? How many are looking for the matching sock? How many are remembering holding hands with an ex-lover, and the moment she let go?
At this moment, I believe I am the only person in the world eating baked ziti in a movie theater remembering an ex-lover, though I dearly hope I am wrong.
And then I am satiated, lean back, and totally enjoy the movie, like so many others around the world at that very moment.
"Sometimes, I wonder how many people in the world are doing the same thing at the same time? How many are reading Thomas Wolfe after having forgotten he existed?" Beautiful. -- DL
Posted by: DL | March 21, 2015 at 10:00 PM