Pizza Tonight

My Domino's Pizza delivery guy tonight was named Olexander. He had a vaguely eastern European look to him and he grunted in what could have been Russian monosyllables. That got me thinking about some of the people I worked with at Domino's in my hometown. At times, good old American mutts like myself were outnumbered by the foreign-originated guys. The university in my hometown seemed to recruit international students and many of them liked to deliver pizzas.

There was Biplab, from India.

Saleem, from Jordan, I think.

Ali, from Iran. He came to Minnesota from Germany, so his Persian accent had a distinctly German tinge.

Mikhail, from Georgia. Soviet, not peach. Actually I don't think that's how he spelled his name. It sounded exactly like Michael, but wasn't spelled that way.

Jabran. I have no idea where he was from, could have been anywhere from Bangladesh to Cypress, but his English was very good.

Park, from South Korea.  Technically, Park was his last name, but he'd rather we call him that than mangle his given name.

I think we had a Kuwaiti or UAE native at one point but I can't recall his name. There were others too, no doubt but those are the ones that stand out.

In non-foreign names, we had a Kyra, pronounced Keer-ah but everyone, employees included, called her Kye-rah. Or maybe it was the other way around. It's been a long time.

We had an Ann, but I called her Annabel. After a few months, other people started to as well. One of several reasons she ended up disliking me. A lot.

Oh, and if anyone's wondering, yes, I brought Susan amaretto sours in that 32 oz sip container on slow nights when she was running the inside. She wasn't a driver, folks, and she was, well,  hot.  What's a guy to do?

This stroll down memory lane was brought to you by my forgetfulness. I have to wait 30 minutes after taking my evening pill before eating and I remembered to take it just as Olexander was pulling in the driveway. At least the pizza won't burn the roof of my mouth tonight. Done that more than a few times in my years in the trenches.