Literature

Leave Your Galoshes at Home

"Don't do pizza delivery!" Mom and Dad had always told her. "There's creeps out there. It's not safe for a girl."

So Tessie, rebel-by-predestination and hell-bent on doing everything "not safe for a girl," went into pizza delivery. And just for good measure, she tattooed both her arms to the shoulder, donned a leather mini-skirt, and delivered pizzas while hitchhiking. Trans-dimensionally.

Mom and Dad wondered when she'd get a real job, settle down with some nice Jewish boy and raise them seven or eight grandchildren. Tessie cruised night clubs and dated the hottest girls this side of the Milky Way. Mom and Dad worried sick. Tessie took precautions, karate, and (at her mother's insistence), her galoshes.

Life was normal.

"Tess! Delivery!" yelled Tom, manager and reigning pain-in-the-ass at Pizza Universe.

Tessie grudgingly put down her iPhone 3000, abandoning for the time being the latest level of Plants vs. Zombies, v. 32. An old one, a classic, but her favorite. The newest version of