Something terribly small happened yesterday. Something small enough that it would be good to tell you about.

The small happening just happened to happen yesterday. And as usual, small happenings are started by a small thing.

In my case, a pepperoni.

I was casually walking down to the buying end of the school cafeteria, where I would get my favorite meat pizza and then pay for it.

I absolutely loved meat pizza, and today I was not going to let anyone cut me. The teacher reinforced the opinion by telling my other friends they were “on the verge of getting over the line”. I myself stretched out my arms quite selfishly, hoping to get a better position in line.

When I got there, the line was much longer than days on which less popular things were served. After waiting for three minutes, I finally got to grab a tray.

Considering the fact that I had only thirty minutes of eating time and just getting in line to grab a tray with a pizza on it took three minutes (that wasn’t even counting the time it would take to check out), I did not want to waste time.

But food here mattered more than time.

You see, it just so occurred that I had grabbed a pizza with only two pepperonis on it.

I only ate pizzas at the school cafeteria that had three pepperonis on it, like practically all the pizzas were.

I began telling the person next to me (I was only joking of course) that there must have been a thieve who stole the pepperoni on the route to the serving stand, which was about two feet.

When I turned back to the tray, I saw the serving lady’s hand draw back from my pizza. She had taken something from it. Or added something.

Again, in my case, it was a pepperoni.

I now had a full three pepperonis on my tray. I laughed at this happening, for it was not very often one found himself with only one pepperoni.

A little more down on the tray line, I was grabbing myself a tiny helping of salad. You could only get a tiny helping of salad, so I usually chose the one with the most pickles (I love them).

If I could, I would choose the one with the most pickles and tomatoes. But of course tomatoes were probably expensive, for the workers always took a scale and measured it so the tomato slice was exactly 2 ounces. I usually secretly want the cutter to slack off a bit, which she occasionally did once per week or so.

Anyways, I was just reaching for one when I noticed that for once the pickles were all gone. Well, I suppose there was a pickle thieve now.

The lunch lady noticed me starring queerly at the salad. She told me, “Sorree, hon. Der’s no pickle t’day. Come back t’morrow and you prob’ly see some pickles.” (For those of you who aren’t used to listening to this kind of people talk, heres what she said: “Sorry, hon. There’s no pickles today. Come back tomorrow and you will probably see some pickles.”)

So much for pickles.

I looked at the salad longingly. Finally, I grabbed one with what seemed like the biggest one until I realized there wasn’t as much salad. Salad in exchange for tomatoes was the deal here, I realized.

So here I am, with a three-pepperoni pizza, some salad without pickles, fruit and a drink. Walking over to the table I go and…

Oops… looks like that pepperoni just fell off.