Ninety Dollar Pizza?…

I remember hearing about a restaurant in New York offering a $100 hamburger on their menu.

I wondered at the time if anyone was buying the burger but with the right publicity, the right restaurant’s endorsement, the right executive chef standing proudly behind the perfect picture of a happy cow it would probably sell.

$100 for a hamburger.

Yesterday, I wrote a cheque for $90 for school-lunch pizza.

The $90 afforded two of my kids the luxury of eating two lukewarm slices of plain cheese pizza (and one for my four year old) at school every Wednesday (if the person reading the “Who gets pizza?” list could pronounce “Schlotzhauer” and if my Kindergartener was not ensconced in an art project and if my older two weren’t running cross country or sick that day) until Christmas.

The program begins in October and there are twelve Wednesdays between the start date and Christmas holidays.

Twelve Wednesdays = $90.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like a lot for five pieces of pizza divided by my three children each week. It just seemed odd when I wrote in the memo line: pizza on the cheque for $90. Kind of like a bad dream. The kind where hot cheese burns the roof of your mouth.

I placed the cheque in my four year olds princess backpack which also struck me as odd but our school’s policy is to exchange forms with parents through the reliable messenger services of your youngest (or only) child.

I have never understood why the policy wouldn’t be the oldest (or only) or even just say, oldest (why do they have to isolate the onlies when it should be assumed if you’re the only kid in your family, by default you are the oldest as well as the youngest).

I’m not going to put in writing which of my three children we consider the most responsible but I can’t think of any family where the four year old should carry the burden (in addition to a larger-than-their-torso backpack) of moving the family’s finances from the house to the school. Too much can happen. There are too many temptations. Too many variables. Too many puddles, too much mud, too many ways to fold that $90 pizza cheque into the shape of an airplane and launch it out the window. Too many willing kids to accept the cheque in exchange for a unicorn.

I have no idea if the cheque made it to school or whether to expect a sack of magic beans to arrive home at the end of the school day.

I do know my kids are going to start appreciating the gold medal standard that is cheese, dough and sauce.

I also know from here until Christmas, no one is going to be sick on a Wednesday.

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