I’ve been thinking about pie lately, because my small town romance is coming out soon and there’s some stuff about pie in that book. She has the pie. He wants the pie. It’s a tale as old as time, right? Anyway, this post isn’t really about my book or about fairy tales. It’s about pie.

The thing about pie is that we all love it.

It’s warm and sweet and comforting.  We like to eat pie, to know it was prepared with love and sugar. We like to make pies for our loved ones, to nourish and spoil them. We work hard to be able to afford pie and we take time from our busy schedules to eat it. Yes, indeed, everyone loves pie.

Except the people who don’t.

Some people think pie is too warm. It’s too comforting. They worry that I’ll flaunt my love of pie, and then everyone will assume I’m a glutton instead of a responsible pie eater. Best to keep it to myself. Just pretend I don’t eat pie. Pretend I don’t even like it. That way no one will give me mean looks on the street. No one will catcall about how much I like pie. And I’ll be able to laugh with the group when someone talks about not having gotten any pie in a long time. Even though I just had pie and it was good.

The thing about pie is that there are lots of different kinds. Cherry pie. Apple pie. Pumpkin pie, though that one’s different, right? The pumpkin is all mashed up instead of cut into pieces. It feels different. I like all those kinds of pies. You can change the crust too. A solid crust draped over the top or a lattice crust. Or a crumb topping. My step mom makes an apple pie with a crumb topping, but she calls it an Apple Crumble. She’s very strict about this. It’s an Apple Crumble, not a pie. I think sometimes there are a lot of expectations surrounding pie, so she doesn’t want to disappoint or be held responsible.

And what about chocolate pie, with that fluffy layer of chocolate and white stuff on top? What is that white stuff, anyway? Or key lime pie. Key lime pie is just weird, I don’t even care who hears me say it. It’s lime mush. And you serve it cold, not warm. You know I’m right. It’s weird. Why are people eating it and swapping recipes and acting like it’s a regular pie when it’s not. It’s a perversion of pie.

But it tastes good.

Suddenly it’s popular to eat these colored-levels of pie, these fifty shades of mush. And when I try a bite, I can admit it tastes pretty good. Sometimes. In small doses. After, I can laugh with my friends because I was daring enough to try it, even if it’s not what I would normally want to eat. Really it just makes me a badass that I even tried it. Turns out a lot of people were eating key lime pie in secret anyway. And hey, it might not be served warm, but it is sweet. So we have that in common. It’s not that different, right?

The thing about pie is that not everything can be pie. If everything were pie, it wouldn’t be special. We have to draw the line somewhere, and anyway, I hate chicken. The peas and carrots part might be palatable, but chicken? Gross. It’s not a fruit or a vegetable. It’s not even lime mush. Chicken is disgusting, and now they want to call it a pie just because they add the word pot that’s supposed to make it okay. But chicken pot pie isn’t a pie. It’s not sweet, it’s an abomination. It’s a symptom of larger systematic problems in our society. It’s an insult to real pies everywhere.

Why does chicken pot pie get to sit on a shelf in the display just like all the other normal pies? Why does it get a little placard that says “Chicken Pot Pie”, because that’s disgusting and we all know it’s disgusting. Even when people talk about making those pies, it’s just for money.  They don’t really like making those pies. You can tell because of the chicken. No one could ever like it.

But then again, if someone is eating chicken pot pie, then probably someone likes it. And maybe, just maybe, someone likes making chicken pot pie too.

Because the thing about pie is that we all like different kinds, and that’s okay.