As a pizza ninja, I am in possession of a wide array of skills, such as pizza twirling, dough stretching, and mop fighting, but nowhere do my skills come into play more, than when I am out on a delivery.
When you are in the field, you have to stay alert at all times, as danger lurks in every doorway. I had two deliveries the other night which required the expert skills of a pizza ninja. The first was to a house built into a hill. At the bottom of the hill was a garage with a door next to it, but the front door was up two flights of wooden steps that led up to a porch. These steps were rickety at best, and deadly at worst, so I decided to use my ninja judgement and knock on the door next to the garage. There was no answer. Heaving a heavy sigh, I turned my attention to the steps and assessed the situation.
The first step was completely broken through, and the next two were rotting and could not support my weight. Stepping to the outside edges of the steps, and flitting lightly and quickly, I made it up to the fourth step, and tried to grab the railing for support. The railing came apart in my hands, the wood as rotten as the steps, and I almost fell backwards down to the driveway, pizza in hand. Luckily, my sense of ninja balance kicked in and I sprinted up to the porch, that also seemed fraught with peril. I banged on the front door, only to hear muffled voices inside saying “He’s at the front door?!” with much incredulity.
At this point I heard a voice from outside the other side of the house calling out to me, and when the woman came around, she looked up and said “What are you doing up there? We don’t use the front door; those steps are dangerous.” I mentioned that I had tried the door next to the garage, but she just gave me a concerned look, and explained that I obviously should have gone up the hill on the other side of the house, through the garden in the backyard, and up to the back door. Silly me. Now all I had to do was get back down the steps.
The second delivery requiring ninja skills came much later in the evening. The first problem I encountered was that my GPS (a useful tool for any ninja, pizza or otherwise) took me to the wrong place. It seemed that this street had been newly extended, so I had a hard time locating the place. When I did finally find the correct house, I rang the doorbell and waited. Nothing. I rang again, but still no answer. I pounded loudly on the door. Silence. This house was in the middle of a row of townhouses, so there were no other doors for me to try, so I starting peeking in the windows.
The lights were on in the house, and at a table a laptop was open, screen saver on, as if someone had been using it at some point that evening. I didn’t have a phone number to call, and the longer I waited, the more crazy ideas started going through my mind. Perhaps there was a burglar inside and they were tied up or, worse, dead! Maybe I should just go in and save their lives! Maybe I would get killed. Hmmm. What to do? Just go back to the pizza place with the pizza? That’s when I thought I saw some movement, not in the house, but in the screened in back porch that I could see through the living room. The porch was dark, but I could swear I had seen movement.
Well, never one to back down from a chance to use my pitch black ninja navigating skills, I decided to go around back. I had to pass through the yards of three other townhouses to get to the porch, and when I arrived there, I saw two people sitting very close together, talking low and smoking…well, something. Standing in total darkness, I knocked on the screen door, held my bag aloft and said “Did anybody order a pizza?”
They jumped about ten feet in the air, and then, when they realized I was not going to kill them, started fumbling around for a light. “Oh, man, I totally forgot!” moaned the woman, as the man continued to sit and stare blankly at me. She seemed very embarrassed (and confused) by the fact that she had ordered a pizza and then hidden herself away, and she expressed to me over and over again how impressed she was that I had found them back there in the dark. I guess she didn’t realize that she was dealing with a pizza ninja, and I always complete my mission.