Amy Lu's View

Chad considers this a perfectly prepared frozen pizza:

Yes, this is by any notion of objective reality that we can hope to discern as mortal beings, burnt.

Chad agrees that the pizza is burnt, he just considers the burtness a feature, not a bug.

My primary motivation for sharing this photographic evidence is because most people don’t get it when I say Chad likes burnt food. He really LIKES it and he likes it BURNT. No, he doesn’t require or even like that everything is burnt but it is definitely his preference for some things, most notably pizza.

This humble 12-inch $2.50 burnt offering (this is a Roma frozen pizza, Chad’s favorite, and yes it costs $2.50 which we both realize can’t be a good sign) also offers a chance to ponder how we try to make those we love happy.

It makes me remember how my mom used to try so hard to burn meals that she made for Chad. It went against every principle of food preparation that she held dear, but she would set aside portions of whatever hotdish or hotdish-adjacent concoction she was concocting and do her best to burn it just for Chad.

She rarely succeeded but he always appreciated the effort.

It also makes me think of the limitations of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

We arrogantly tout that in the white West as the pinnacle of ethics and morality, but it doesn’t take a lot of reflection to realize that’s pretty self-invovled. I don’t want Chad (or anyone) to make me a burnt frozen pepperoni pizza (unless I’m REALLY drunk) and Chad certainly doesn’t want a standardly prepared pizza with artichoke hearts.

I think the Silver Rule (Do NOT do unto others what you would not have them to unto you) helps expand our behavioral repertoire but is also insufficient for all situations. (It is also quite arrogant and biased to call this the “Silver” rule since it is mostly based on Eastern religions).

Obviously, no one rule is going to cover all behavioral conundrums, just like no one type of pizza is going to make everyone happy.

But I think it would be really helpful if we paid more attention to people as individuals and what they actually want and need, and not just what we think they want/need/like based on what we want/need/like (rather consciously or unconsciously) or think they should want/need/like. We also shouldn’t reflexively condemn people for what they want/need/like unless we think about it and there is a really good reason to, and we should try to be open to learning from what others want/need/like. (Case in point: I don’t like my pizza as burnt as Chad but after 30 plus years of frozen pizza-related buying and preparing and eating and sometimes fighting–actually our second biggest fight ever was about frozen pizza–I DO like my pizza more burnt than I ever did).

Um, yeah, that’s not really much of a “rule” or even a “guideline” as a meandering…which I like. In fact, my rule is that I generally like meanderings much better than rules. And I think the most appropriate metal for anything related to me is probably aluminum (given all the pop I drink) so I think I just invented:

The Aluminum Meandering

-me, inventing a moral suggestion

It’s also a great band name.