I bought this laptop a few weeks ago. My life is still the same. One exciting change, though, is that now I can write my columns at work while hiding back behind the deep fryers, always ready to jump up off this milk crate in case I have to do something.

If I had majored in food service, I’d probably have my Ph.D. by now if I received class credit for feeding drunk college students a bunch of greasy bar food.

For the last three years I’ve been shifting between glorified fast food establishments that specialize in beer and pizza — never earning enough to live comfortably — but also never being required to wake up before noon. It’s a decent trade-off. All I have to do is show up for work, somewhat coherent. Then I drop things into a deep fryer for specified amounts of time, count chicken wings and add toppings to large slabs of flat bread.

Believe me though, this takes skill. You don’t just learn the ins and outs of pizza overnight. Experience only comes with a certain amount of failure. And this failure is one of the factors assisting in a conundrum I currently face. More on that later.

But first, when I say “failure,” what I really mean is getting an order wrong. You know when you go to a pizza shop and you try to be really specific about your food, but those idiots in the kitchen get it wrong anyway? Yeah? Then you make them do it over again?

Well whether you know it or not, your prissy tastes are not welcome. Your appreciation for crispy chicken, extra mayonnaise and vendetta against onions is not appreciated. Kitchen workers like to keep it simple, but there you are, thinking you’re all special.

More often than not, that master concoction of ingredients that was off by only one variable, which you rejected, was probably eaten by the kitchen staff. Because of this, I’ve eaten a lot of pizza. Maybe I should thank you.

Naturally, kitchen mistakes are not the only things that have brought me to eat disgusting amounts pizza. As a college student, pizza is a part of life. I am thoroughly embarrassed how many weeklong pizza binges I’ve been on through the years. Sometimes I can still walk into a building and immediately detect the faint, glimmering smell of pizza. I can even name the toppings.

However, without any warning, one day my body had enough. Leaving out the details, I can faithfully say that I had overdosed on pizza. And thus, I cannot eat pizza anymore. I find a slab of dough with tomato sauce and cheese smothered all over the top to be entirely unappealing, and I want no part of it.

That extra pizza at work and a slice or two someone offers to me at a party, I will not touch. Don’t even bother trying. I don’t want any.

Needless to say, pizza is everywhere. It is unavoidable. This newfound distaste came with a price. Not only do I have to look at it every single day, but a fair percentage of food around me is now inedible. What’s worse is that I am almost always hungry, and if not, I will be in an hour. The fact that I now find pizza to be unappetizing is a discouraging addition to everyday life.

On the positive side, my cholesterol is now probably somewhere within an acceptable range. What little chubby fat I might have been gaining a year ago is now receding and again I have had to start adding additional holes to my belt.

When I get home tonight, I know what will be somewhere in the kitchen. I have four roommates, and they all love pizza. However tonight, as with most nights, I’ll have to find an alternative. It’s not easy, and if things keep going this way, pretty soon I won’t eat spaghetti either.

Garrison Ebie is a senior electronic media major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].