A Story From Last Week.

So there's this members-only pool in my delivery area, right on Richardson's main drag, Belt Line Road, but hidden so well by trees I never realized it existed. White people apparently pay good money to have a place where they can swim, drink, and show Jimmy Neutron on a 30-inch projection screen hung on a fence. Back in my day, we had public pools, with public people, and swimming cost 25 cents a day. This private thing is probably better. Those public pools can get you into trouble.

We had two different people order pizzas at this pool last Friday night. The orders were independent of each other (neither one knew the other had ordered), and came about 15 minutes apart. Here's the thing -- the orders had different addresses. One of them had a Belt Line address and the other a Spring Creek Road address. But they were going to the same place, White Power Pool or whatever it was called. Do you see the potential confusion here? Is this like an episode of Three's Company or what?

The next thing you know, Charles the delivery driver attempts to find the Spring Creek Road address. Right on the ticket it says "deliver to pool." He thinks he finds the right place, but doesn't. He ends up going to a pool at some house, and the people there tell him to get out of their yard you freak, nobody ordered pizza. Charles then tries to call the number on the ticket, but nobody answers. So Charles comes back with the two medium pizzas, and they sit under the warmer slowly getting crusty.

Before Charles comes back with the mediums, I leave with two large pizzas for the same place, but I am actually able to find it. Wow, I thought, there's a pool here. I walk in through the gate and in front of me is a large pool, with white people milling about in all directions. There's no door guard or intercom system like at the other exclusionary pools in the area, so I wander around for about 30 seconds before I get to a clubhouse. Remember, at this point I have no idea that two people are getting pizza. Just as someone in the clubhouse has pity on me and starts to try to find the perps who ordered it, a guy way on the opposite side of the pool waves me over. I make my way over there, dodging wet kids and splashes and a woman with a nice bod and skunk hair. The guy thinks his order comes to $15.14, but in my world the ticket reads $20.56. I call the store, and because the addresses on the tickets are different they don't figure out that I actually have the wrong pizzas for this dude. The manager tells me to give him the 2 large pizzas for the lower price, and I walk back the other way around the pool, away from the weirdly attractive skunk lady. As I am almost to the gate, a nice wet lady smiles at me and says, "I guess we'll be seeing you again soon, eh?" I have no idea what she's talking about. I get to my car and the wheels in my head have spun enough to make the call to the Papa and ask if there are any other orders for this stupid pool on Belt Line Road. Of course, the manager says no, because the addresses for the two orders are different. We still don't know at this point. Isn't this kooky?

I'm about halfway to Papa John's when the other manager calls and clarifies what just happened. I told her I gave the two larges to the guy, and she starts to figure things out. She asks if the guy was happy, and I say yes -- he got two larges for a medium price. It's at this point I realize that I gave the guy somebody else's pizzas, because over the phone I can hear things like, "This is to a pool, too?" and, "F___ing Charles!" I get back to the store and it's all laid out before us like some bad movie...Charles went to the wrong pool because he's an idiot, I went to the right pool but was called over by the wrong guy, and there's a wet white woman out there who's been waiting for her pizzas for almost an hour. Oh, and the pool apparently uses flexible addressing. What a colossal mess.

The poor woman's pizzas are re-made and given to her for free. She didn't seem to notice they were late, and didn't seem to have compared notes with the other guy. She was happy, the guy was happy enough to not call back, I was happy because the manager basically zeroed out all the charges (giving me an extra 15 bucks for my trouble), and the crew was happy because they got to devour the guy's two medium pizzas. The End.

Epilogue: Later that night, Charles calls the Manager while out on another delivery. According to the Manager, Charles said something like, "I've had a little problem...it's going to take me about 10 minutes to get back there...I don't want to talk about it."

We never found out what the problem was.