meow

the doctor of pizzas

by john ryan gallagher 

there used to be this guy in my hometown that would try to pick up all these hot young chicks by telling them that he was a doctor. he had an accent, was very tanned, in his late twenties, had a nice car, and wasn’t afraid to buy drinks for strangers. sometimes chicks would fall for his shtick, which infuriated me because i knew damn well he worked full time at the house of pizza in town. he wasn’t a doctor. he was a liar. one night i got bombed and called him out for being the fraud that he was in front of a bunch of skirts he was wooing. he smiled ever so slyly and told the girls i was wrong. i was pretty persistent and finally, annoyed, he admitted that he was just the doctor of pizzas and left before anyone asked any more questions.  

this was the summer of ‘01 and a few months later i heard tell of this same guy, we’ll forever call him the doctor of pizzas, being chased out of one of the local bars by a herd of angry bro dudes who were shouting things at him like ‘hijacker’ and ‘towelhead’. this mad me very sad. i felt horrible that he had to endure such treatment for something he had nothing to do with. i instantly regretted calling him out for impersonating a doctor and embarrassing him that summer.  

the irony was that the poor guy was greek and the moron douchers from my town were too stupid to recognize this. like most, they were quick to look for someone and something to blame for 9/11.

i guess the point in my telling this story is to remember all the victims of 9/11, even ones like the doctor of pizzas.

top photo by Rachel Dowda.