The Pizza-Bomb Crisis
May 1994 - Oil - 36 by 24 inches
sold to Lucy Huntzinger, April 1998
During my senior year of High School, there were a number of pleasant spring days spent away from classes, waiting in line in front of the school while a bomb squad searched the building for the presence of a bomb that an anonymous caller had claimed to be in there. The first time we were out of classes for three hours. For the first few minutes, the teachers strictly ordered us to be quiet, but as the hours dragged on and order broke down, a festive mood came over us. We started sitting and chatting. Some people were kissing. The bolder delinquents lit their cigarettes. The groovier teachers bummed cigarettes. Someone ordered pizza. I told dirty jokes, and the teachers laughed. But all the jokes the teachers told were clean, and we pretended to laugh. The next day another bomb scare happened, and we were out of classes for two hours. And the next day we were out for an hour. Then, on the fourth day, someone in the bomb squad found a stack of pizza boxes on top of a locker. A robot was ordered in and it unceremoniously brought them out. The boxes had that certain weight and appearance that said only pizza to us, right down to the artery-clogging grease soaking through. The bomb sniffing dogs grew excited and strained at their leashes as they were led near the pizza boxes. We were ordered back another 300 feet, and took turns watching the proceedings through binoculars. The robot was called upon to pry the pizza boxes open one by one as we fought over the binoculars. But as far away as we were, we could still smell the pizza those boxes contained. Just pizza.