Pie Profiling

It's high time you gave some serious thought to pie.

I mean beyond the obvious "What's your favorite kind?" or "What was your mother's specialty?" Turns out there is deep-dish meaning to be found in one's pie behavior, pie expectations, pie values. So naturally some educated upper-crust boomer has written a book about it and gotten her 5-minute spiel on NPR.

According to Anne Dimock, it's all about men (as pie-eaters), women (as pie-makers), and power. "It's a power that comes from quiet observation and deep knowledge about your competition." Oh please.

She has catalogued the kinds of men "worth making another pie for" after identifying a man she wanted more attention from and making pies "to test him." Some men "regard pie as an entitlement." At their worst, they "will take your pie, and you, for granted," but at their best, they "know why yours is better than anybody else's and why only yours will do." This kind of cleverness reminds me of George Carlin's substituting the word fuck for every use of kill in a TV show. Here we can just substitute ass for every reference to pie and understand where's she's coming from.

It gets worse. Men shall be judged according to where they place their arms after eating pie, how large or small their bites are, where they begin to eat the slice, whether and how they ask for a second slice, and (drum-roll) whether they dig out the filling (LIAR!!). Indeed, and you probably saw this coming, "Pie is a window to a man's soul." Come to think of it, I bet foreign-policy decisions are being made over dessert all the time at white house state dinners.

Gosh, I feel so darn empowered now, I think I'll take notes on each of my Thanksgiving dinner companions. I'll deconstruct my wife's approach to mashed potatoes, my sister's handling of cranberry sauce, my daughter's decision making regarding stuffing, and the whole ideology of white meat vs. dark meat. Maybe I could get a grant to study it. Meanwhile, somebody refill my wine glass.

Happy Thanksgiving.