The Black Olives

I suppose it was my own damn fault.

But I was worried about getting the wrong kind of olives on my pizza.  The last time I had ordered black olives, my pizza came with some kind of weird-ass nasty looking olives. 

That. Were. Not. Black. Olives.

I just wanted to be sure that I got the right kind of black olives this time.

My BFF Becca and I were at lunch at a very nice Pizza/Sandwich shop that begins with a B and ends with an S and has two L's in the middle.

We were ordering personal pizzas from the counter guy.  Let's call him "Buck".

I told Buck that I would like black olives and tomatoes on my pizza.  I then added, "Are your black olives black olives or the other kind?"

"Black olives," said Buck.  "They are black olives."

"But are they black olives?  Not the other kind of olives that I got on a pizza once?"

"They're black olives," Buck said, enunciating the word "black."  He gave me the look you would give a two year old who was asking too many questions.

I told Buck that I had a pizza once with black olives and they weren't really black olives.

Buck sighed, turned around, and proceeded to the topping area, where HE PICKED UP A HANDFUL OF BLACK OLIVES WITH HIS BARE UN-GLOVED HANDS.

He brought them back to the counter, held our his hand and said, "These are black olives."

I was stunned.

"Yeah," I said.  "Those are them.  They are certainly black olives."

I turned to Becca for help.  Becca, who never leaves home without a back-up bottle of hand sanitizer, looked completely unscathed.  Like there was nothing unusual for a pizza counter guy to hold out a handful of black olives.

In the meantime,  Buck turned around, and headed back to where he had obtained the black olives.

A guttural sound escaped from my mouth when I observed Buck dropping the black olives back into the black olive bin.  He slapped his hands together, presumably to remove any black olive juice, and returned to the counter.

I no longer wanted black olives on my pizza.

But I had just told Buck that his black olives were the black olives that I wanted.

Here's what I should have said.

"Buck, I no longer want back olives on my pizza because you just picked up a handful of black olives and I don't know where your hands have been."

But instead I gulped and said, "Okay.  I want a pizza with black olives and tomatoes."

Thankfully, Buck didn't show me the tomatoes.

When we got to our seats, and I was done throwing up in my mouth, I told Becca that I didn't know how I could possibly eat the pizza.  She reassured me that the germs would be cooked off in the oven.

I was so relieved.

And even more relieved that I had not ordered the Greek Salad.