Get the door. It’s Dominos [and friendship]!

Am I embarrassed that the cashier at Domino’s knows me by name (“Hey Richard! Glad to see you made it home Saturday night!”)? Is it sad that when I call Dominos, they recognize my voice and know my order before I can get past “hello?” (“is it a bacon-cheesy bread with no jalapenos or large pizza with chicken and pepperoni kind of night? Oh really? Bad day?”). Frankly, my deep relationship with the Dominos staff has been years in the making. Every William & Mary freshman learns to identify that one person on their hall who orders Dominos on the regular, and who is either very generous or can be easily (and cheaply) bribed. Our first glorious night on Yates 1^st South, my beloved neighbor ordered not one, but two pizzas, because it made “most sense to share;” thankfully he maintained that philosophy through 290 Flex points. As my years as a student stretched on, my experiences with Dominos grew outside my immediate friends: how could I forget when my (now) dear friend spotted me in Wawa late one Friday night and said, “Richard, help me. I just ordered a pizza and I have no way to pay for it.”

In short, there are very few people at this school with whom I have not shared at least one slice of pizza. We talk so much about our tight-knit community and the bonds we form here at the College, but we seldom appreciate the small ways that those connections are made. It’s not always through your freshman seminar, your favorite club, or your Greek organization; sometimes a profound friendship can spring from a simple late night craving for cheese, bread, and tomato sauce.

At this school, pizza and friendship go together like William & Mary (cheesy, I know). I could not count the number of deep conversations and friendships forged over a box of Dominos. They say that college is a time for growth and personal development, so the Richard from Convocation freshman year might be unrecognizable to me when I pass through the Wren building on graduation day. While I like to think that I’ve grown up a lot in my time here, one thing that has remained constant throughout the past three years – through the clubs, the parties, the friendships, the classes – is that never ending craving for pizza.