status update about Pizza Hut

Originally posted September 10, 2020

When I was a kid, I had a birthday party with a bunch of my friends, where the first half of it was at Pizza Hut and the second half was at a local arcade called Pinball City, which was in the same shopping center. I remember Mortal Kombat was just released, so this dates it to my 8th birthday in 1993. 

 

It was awesome - dining in at Pizza Hut was fantastic back in the 90s, and my parents worked out some deal with the arcade where everyone in my birthday party could get a free reload of tokens for the hour that we were there. Fantastic memory.

 

I have a handful of specific smaller memories about this party that stick in my mind for some reason. I remember when the party was in its planning stages, I really wanted the arcade portion to come first (because video games were way more interesting to me than pizza as an 8 year old), and I remember my sister's husband-at-the-time was trying to help me come up with a pitch to convince my parents to order it that way. "Why don't you say we'll play video games first and work up such a huge appetite, that we'll all be so hungry for pizza afterwards?" My parents insisted that we eat first, which I agree is the correct decision now that I'm an adult.

 

I remember I got some Ninja Turtle action figure as a birthday present, and a friend of mine brought his little brother to the party (who was maybe 4 or 5 years old?). He really liked that turtles present I got and took it upon himself to carry it around for the rest of the time we were at Pizza Hut. I remember stressing out to my mom about this, worried that he thought it was his and that he was going to take it home. "He's not taking it home, he just likes looking at it!" she assured me. Another action as an 8 year old that I really wanted my mom to take (ripping it out of his hands and sternly reinforcing that it was not his so I could have peace of mind), that as an adult I'm really glad she didn't - there's no way he would have actually taken it home, and I can't stand the thought of an adult being so mean to an innocent 4 year old.

 

I remember Mortal Kombat so distinctly because I remember my friend Ryan spent most of his arcade time waiting in line and watching teenagers play it. (Even though we had unlimited tokens for the hour, we didn't have the arcade to ourselves and that was the most popular game, so it was tough to actually get to play it.) I remember feeling bad that he spent most of his arcade time not actually playing games.

 

I love this memory and I'll have it forever. I associate the taste of Pizza Hut pizza with it. Their pizza is nothing to write home about, but it is distinct, and whenever I eat it I always conjure up images and sensations of noisy arcades with greasy joysticks, and drinking soda from those clear red cups under those hanging lamp domes.

 

No real point to this post other than to say that experiences can be powerful, and people (especially children) absorb them and store them as memories way more often than we may realize, so create them with the people in your life that you love and cherish, and gift them with a way of recalling those memories forever with something as simple as ordering pizza. (In case it's not obvious, I'm eating Pizza Hut while typing this)