DATE: Friday, August 8, 1997                TAG: 9708080083

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SERIES: SLICE OF LIFE

        PART I

SOURCE: BY JEREMY HULATT, COLLEGE CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:   99 lines

PIZZA JOB DELIVERS PEEK INTO PERSONAL LIVES OF OTHERS

We've all seen the pizza delivery person. He or she hustles up to our homes with the hot, cheesy treat. But what do pizza delivery people see when they reach our doorsteps? Jeremy Hulatt is a pizza delivery man. Today and next week, he'll let us glimpse with him into the lives of his customers.

I GET TO PEEK into the lives of strangers and to see hundreds of different people with hundreds of different lives. Sometimes, even if just for a minute, I whisper into those lives, and they whisper into mine.

Given random destinations, I sail the city streets and greet people at their door. Fluttering from house to house, I find myself falling into a rhythm of hurried exchange riddled with kindly hellos and vacant small talk. Of the many blurred faces I come across, there are a few that linger in my memory.

I deliver pizza.

One day I delivered to an elderly couple in Sherry Park, right across the street from my store. I enjoy the short runs like that because I don't have to drive too far and I get back to the store quickly. That means I get another delivery right away. The more deliveries, the more money.

Little did I know what to expect of this trip.

It was a modest little house with bright green grass and well trimmed bushes. I walked up to the door, rang the doorbell and waited. I waited some more. I waited just a little longer and was about the ring again when the door began creaking open, slowly.

A wrinkled and rigid hand, covered with brown spots and purple veins, fumbled around the edge of the door, trying with what seemed to be all its might, to get the door open. As the door gave, I could see a very elderly gentlemen. He just looked at me, sucking his cheeks in and moving his lips all around the way many old people do. He motioned to me to go on in as he slowly turned and inched away. I felt like I was at ``The Munsters!''

Inside it smelled of dried flowers. The man's wife sat on the couch contentedly watching golf and sewing a patch into the elbow of a blue dress-shirt. There were pictures everywhere. Generations and generations of pictures, all neatly framed and all sparkling clean. There were pictures on the walls, on top of the television and even on shelves. The gentleman returned to his armchair and began to fumble with small stacks of neatly arranged coins on the table in front of him.

His fingers didn't bend. They seemed to be locked in one position, and he moved painfully slowly. He counted each stack, coin by coin, three dollars in quarters, four dollars in dimes, three dollars in nickels, and then a separate stack of eighty-nine cents. By the time he had gotten to the second stack of quarters, my mind already had wandered off. I knew that I would be there for quite a while.

Watching him struggle to count the change, I felt guilty; guilty for being young, for being agile and for taking these things for granted. I felt sorry for the man, but he was old and apparently had lived a very long life, so I guess I really just felt sorry for the way that time had treated him.

Although cramped and twisted with age, he did not have a frail frame. He was tall, though his back hunched forward a bit, and he had wide shoulders that I imagined were once broad and muscular. I looked over the displayed pictures and tried to find a picture of him.

There was one picture of a young man on a horse holding a little girl in his lap and smiling handsomely. The picture was black and white but actually looked a little yellow. The man looked proud and strong. His hair was thick and dark, and his chest bulged under a flannel shirt. He looked like a hero from an old western movie. I asked the man if that was him, and he answered with a strict ``Umph'' that I think was a yes.

He had probably always been the provider of the family, and judging from the picture, he had been a large and powerful man, adept at physical challenges. Now he was a crumbled man, barely able to count out change, yet determined, no matter how long it would take. I held a certain amount of respect for him because of that.

``YA NEED TA COUN' IT?'' he bellowed, making me jump. I was surprised that his old body held such thunder.

I told him that it was fine, that I didn't need to count the money, so he started sliding it off the table into a little plastic sandwich bag. I set the pizza on the coffee table for him and he handed me the money. He began to rise and said that he would walk me to the door, but I told him I could see myself out.

The change jingled in my pocket with each step as I walked to my car. I had been inside for about 15 minutes, and my car was about to overheat. I got no tip, and I probably missed out on one or two other deliveries, but I didn't mind.

I still think about that man sometimes. I wonder exactly how old he is and how life must be when the simplest of tasks become a struggle. I wonder if I will ever be that old, and if I would ever really want to be. He didn't seem to mind. I probably wouldn't either as long as I had my wife with me watching golf and fixing my shirts, or whatever we might be doing. I wonder if I will eat pizza when I am that old.

Maybe that's the key. Eat pizza, live long. MEMO: Jeremy Hulatt is a senior at Old Dominion University. Part Two of

his story will appear in Teenology next Friday. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

TING-LI WANG

The Virginian-Pilot

Jeremy Hulatt, who delivers for Pizza Hut, has had some encounters

with customers that linger in his memory.

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