My mom sure can hydrate a pizza. My grandma, rest her soul, said mom has no artistry in it. I heard stories that my grandmother worked the dough with her bare hands (ew); it always came out slightly different; more ridiculous, I heard her generation would devote a portion of an entire day (if you can even humor that ridiculous notion) to pizzacraft.

Grandma was always a broken record with that stuff. The family would sit around that table, apparently, gabbing about nothing, and everything, just staring into a raw pizza, pulling and stretching it, starting over, living with their hunger, for a flawed process to bake slowly.

These days, fresh pizza is 10 seconds away, it's always identical and we never have to share. It's hydrated, eaten, and in the trash by the time I am onto my next attention, always perfect, always on time, always identical. I don't think about this much, but I sometimes really feel pity for what the old timers suffered through, all those ridiculous, pointless wasted interactions and delays, sitting there for what felt like ages, for a random pizza shaped thing.

I dont get it.