“Be Cool to the Pizza Dude” Sarah Adams

Background In this brief essay, Sarah Adams offers insights into how one might live harmoniously in a world overflowing with impatience, self-centeredness, injustice, and vanity. Adams’s point is that being “cool to the pizza dude” --- that is respecting and empathizing with someone on a low rung of the socioeconomic ladder even if the person’s behavior is sometimes annoying --- takes a measure of self-control but can lead one to appreciate what is truly worthwhile.

Cause and Effect This essay is a good example of cause and effect used to develop a personal topic. How persuasive is Adams’s case for being cool to the pizza dude? Is she trying to simply share her “operating philosophy” (Adams) or is she trying to convince readers to put this philosophy into practice themselves?

Question #2 Why does she feels it is important to be “cool” to him and his kind? For Adams respecting him and treating him courteously makes her a better person. Do you agree with her view?

Question #1 What does “the pizza delivery dude” represent to Adams? What in her description leads you to this response? The “pizza delivery dude” represents the poor working stiff whom people may look down on and even be irritated by. He drives a “rusted Chevette,” has taken the job “just to have a job because some money is better than none” and is contrasted with a powerful but unscrupulous CEO (Adams).

Question #3 What four virtues does Adams gain by being cool to the pizza dude? Tolerance, patience, caring, understanding, lack of ego, appreciation of others, and respect are possible virtues you could have considered.

Question #4 What do these virtues tell you about what Adams’s values? Adams values kindness, consideration toward others, generosity of spirit, and selflessness.

Question #5 What is the point of the final paragraph of the essay? Her purpose is to persuade her readers gently, even in an entertaining way, to consider adopting her philosophy. She is offering a code of values to apply to relations between individuals and others.

Question #6 What is noteworthy of the opening sentences in paragraphs 2 through 5? The opening sentences of paragraphs 2 through 5 are parallel in structure and thus somewhat formal, interestingly at odds with the informality everywhere else. These sentences lend some serious weight to Adams’s principles.

Question #7 How does Adams develop paragraph 2 and how does this development clarify her point? Paragraph 2 is developed through description and example. Adams shows hypothetical pizza dude and herself in action to demonstrate how he might anger her and how she decides to stay cool.

Question #8 Why does Adams present her four principles in the order that she does? The movement of the four virtues is from the most personal (“humility and forgiveness”) to the most universal (“equality”), with “empathy” and “honor” having to do with the one-on-one relationships (Adams).

Question #9 Where does Adams use comparison and contrast in her essay? Why does she use it? Adams uses comparison and contrast in paragraph 3 when she likens herself to the pizza dude and in paragraph 4 when she suggests the great difference between the pizza dude and the CEO. In both cases, the effect is to create sympathy for the pizza dude.

Question #10 How does Adams define cool as it is used in her title? Adams uses cool in the sense of maintaining an open, relaxed attitude (as in, “I’m cool with that”).

Question #11 Adams’s essay was written to be read aloud on the radio. How would you characterize her tone? The tone overall is immediate and informal, gained through a combination of slang words (such as cool and dude), direct address (“Let’s face it”; “Let me tell you”), and vivid figurative language (“sometimes you’re the hot bubbly cheese and sometimes you’re the burnt crust”)(Adams).

Question #11 (Cont’d) Adams also uses almost brash examples, such as “I didn’t have to share my Cheerios with my cats,” or “They never took over a company and, as CEO, artificially inflated the value of the stock and cashed out their own shares, bringing the company to the brink of bankruptcy” (Adams).

Vocabulary harried (2) - harassed, annoyed, or proved a nuisance empathy (3) - the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. fickle (3) - likely to change bestow (6) - to present as a gift; give; confer