Love letter to Waffle House

Waffle House, this is for you and all your late-night dining establishment brethren. You have seen me through an awful lot during the last few years.

What I like about you is what I like about most people — you’re a little dirty, a little kitschy and a little obscene, but you’re also honest, and so kind. 

You are exactly what you say you are. The bright yellow sign boldly and universally proclaims to weary travelers or not-so-sober college students, “Find solace (and breakfast foods) within.”

You’re all of the good things I look for in friends — honest, easygoing, available — and all of the bad things I look for in boys — indulgent, neglected and regretted by me just a little bit later.

You’re always, always there. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Your sweet, drawly waitresses seem to possess a kind of wisdom and rigor that only the food service industry can harden into you.  You bring to mind family vacations, late-night drives along the highway and halfhearted agreements from my poor mother.
 
My brother and I have always been dedicated crusaders of dive-diner fare. There was only ever really one rule when it comes to choosing a restaurant: the dirtier the better. Their exteriors might be a cause for caution, but their cheap, free-refill coffee and 50-cent donuts will steal your heart.

I’ve had many an existential crisis at your tables. So many of my freshman-year nights ended there, angrily texting with another person across the table, not even sure what I was upset about, but maybe that everything, all at once, was upsetting.

Intently pouring over my themed placemat, I sat silently, drinking glass after glass of water, hoping they could somehow flush the night’s mistakes right out of me.

Maybe I was replaying the misfortune of weekends past or trying not to eavesdrop on the boys at the next table over, who were tripping on acid and ordering hash browns. Sometimes, I was glancing over at the seemingly ever-present table of policemen.

So please, never change. I needed you those nights when I just wanted to hang out with my dad, but everywhere else was already closed.

Suburban teenagers need you for when we’re too young to go to the bars but too old to go home.

We need you when we’re too obedient to spend all night experimenting with drugs and boys but too smart to not want to worry our parents, at least a little bit.

We need you when it’s been a long night, semester, year, and we just want a chocolate chip waffle. 

We need you when we all want to feel a little nostalgic, a little more at home, a little more like a family, just talking over the breakfast table.

We need you when there’s nowhere else left to go, but we have to go somewhere, because we’re too worried to go to sleep.

We need you, Waffle House.

­— alistone@indiana.edu