the average bear

Call me a food Samaritan.

I was standing outside my apartment the other day with my upstairs neighbor, a stylish gay who drives an X5 and listens to loud pop music in the morning to prepare for work. I know this because he dances on my ceiling and I awake to his routine almost every day.

Mid-conversation, an apartment door opened and out came John, our new neighbor.

"Hey, how you guys doin'?" John asked, "Did I meet you already? I'm John, I just moved in."

We exchanged names and he then asked, "I have a strange question. Do either of you have a rolling pin?"

An odd request. "What are you rolling out?" I inquired.

"Pizza dough."

Now, unbeknownst to John, I know a little bit about food and about pizza dough having worked for a pizzeria as its marketer. I know how to explain the basics of pizza dough to press so I thought maybe I could help John the new neighbor cum pizzaiolo.

"You can just knead it with your knuckles." He said he'd tried but the dough was just too hard and his hands were tired and sore. Sounded a little odd to me. So I asked him about the temperature of the dough. Turns out that he had just taken it out of the fridge and it was still cold. I told him to let it come to room temperature and try again, perhaps using the side of a bowl or mug to help him since he didn't have a baseball bat.

John closed the door to his apartment after he'd gone back inside, probably to get back to pounding the dough with a hammer. I wished his pizza well.