A DAMN FINE WAFFLE

Picture, if you will, a Waffle House in rural North Carolina. Or maybe it
was South Carolina. Maybe even Georgia.

Picture a blue mini-van filled to the brim with various possessions,
toting a large UHaul trailer, also filled to the brim, pulling into the
parking lot.

Picture Wynn, who, with another friend, has graciously offered to help me
move from a terrible situation in Annapolis, Maryland, back to Houston,
Texas. He took off three days to fly to Maryland, help me pack, and help
haul all my things (+ 2 cats) back home. This was all in January, 1999,
after I'd known him some 15 years throughout high school, college, and
other life-changing eras.

Picture the trio entering the Waffle House. It wasn't breakfast time, but
we were pretty hungry, and this was pretty much the only place around.

Imagine, for whatever surreal reason, the sounds of Wagner coming from the
typically Muzak ceiling speakers. We're talking epic music, "Ride of the
Valkyries" kind of music. Totally NOT Waffle House music.

Picture the trio sidling up to the counter, sitting on the round, twirly
stools. We perused the menu. Wynn decides on a Belgian waffle with
pecans. And whipped cream. I have no idea what I got.

The waffle arrives. In typically Wynn fashion, he truly relishes every
morsel of the waffle. "Mmmm, mmm..." he utters while chewing and nodding
his head. "This is a damn fine waffle." A few more 'yummy sounds' come
from him. "Yep, a damn fine waffle."

Picture Wynn as he suddenly snaps to the incongruous selection of music
playing over the speakers. It's sweeping. It's epic.

It calls to him.

Wynn is transformed into a narrator of some amazing saga. "AND THEY WENT
INTO THE WAFFLE HOUSE!"

<insert Wagnerian music here>

He makes grand gestures. "THEY ORDERED A WAFFLE. BUT THIS WAS NO
ORDINARY WAFFLE. IT WAS A DAMN FINE WAFFLE!"

<unbelievably "not-rural-America-Waffle-House" music keeps playing>

He continues with his soliloquy. Every few sentences is something about a
DAMN FINE WAFFLE.

Other patrons are beginning to get a little nervous. Wynn presses on, all
the while consuming his damn fine waffle and waxing eloquent about it.

The harried waitress glares at us.

She finally works up the courage to come over to us.

"Um...you're making some of the other customers kind of upset. Could you
perhaps leave?"

The trio exchange embarrassed glances. And laugh uncontrollably as they
pay and leave.

You see, the Waffle House is where drunk people go to sober up, hanging
over the chairs. It's where college students go in the middle of the
night because they have no other place to go. THEY don't get kicked out.

But Wynn did. He might very well be the only person in history to have
discovered the etiquette limits of a Waffle House.

Admittedly, it really was a DAMN FINE WAFFLE.

I'm still trying to process the words that I heard when Wynn's and my high
school friend Sammy Buck called me last Wednesday to tell me about Wynn.
22 years of friendship just doesn't seem like enough. Two Bellaire High
School proms (1987 and 1999), a trip to San Francisco to see Emo Philips
(bizarre in a way that makes Wynn seem normal) and Camel (progressive rock
band), countless e-mails, phone conversations, 'dates.' Watching Dr. Who
and Monty Python every single Saturday night of our senior year in high
school (except when those damned PBS fundraisers were happening!).
Spending untold hours during the spring of 1999 when I moved back to
Houston and he was trying to help me out emotionally and
financially...going to dinner, movies, concerts, playing with my son, Sean
(now 8). Enjoying damn fine waffles.

It's not enough. Even when I thought I'd had enough of him (which was
often), it really wasn't, because I always came back for more. I'll miss
you, Wynn. Sean'll miss you, too. He steps around the slugs on his
school sidewalk, just like you'd do, and relishes being different. We'll
see you again, I'm sure. Save a waffle for me.

-C. Renee James, Bellaire HS '87, Rice '91