This story is dedicated to some very unique people.
Disclaimer
The author is not responsible, in any way, for injuries to the reader, including and not limited to, convulsions of laughter, screams of pain, agonies of idiocy, agonies of intelligence, agonies of other things, and death. You should have done more abdominal exercises.
The Story
There once was a boy whose affection for waffles was rivalled only by his affection for poetry. His favorite occupation was to compose poetry aloud while making—and eating—waffles. His favorite time to conduct this pastime? Anytime, but the most romantic, he—Sawyer was his name—felt, was in the middle of the night.
Now, at his home, this passion for nighttime wafflery had been murdered before it had even gotten past eight o’clock at night, but now, at college, Sawyer was unrestrained.
Before we get much further in this tale, it ought to be noted that Sawyer’s convictions compelled him to be atrociously loud at this activity. “The poets were the first rappers!” he cried, and his roommates compared his volume to a natural disaster… or, perhaps, as one was wont to state, an unnatural disaster. “Poetry does not belong with waffles; they are two entirely different categories.” To which Sawyer would reply in a very strongly worded Latin phrase, that we shall not translate for the readers.
Such volume perhaps had been wisely chained by our hero’s mother, for Sawyer’s midnight revelries unchained quickly grew to a monstrous volume. A loud lad naturally, his enthusiasm warranted a growth of volume previously unseen. His vocals were not without talent, for he performed music regularly, but he seemed to have steam that the proverbial kettle of choir practice could not whistle out of him. That he had to do himself, and his roommates well wished that he had chosen another outlet. “Even snoring would be better,” said another roommate. His third roommate could hardly complain, as he was the one who stayed up late and ate Sawyer’s waffles, testifying that they were in fact the best waffles in creation. And his opinion on Sawyer’s poetry? “Not too bad,” he said, but let it be known to our readers that Sawyer’s volume would make anyone deaf, and this particular roommate had had hearing problems before college.
Dear reader, let us pause to name our dear Sawyer’s roommates, because I will not do them the indignity of naming them roommates one, two, and three. The first is called Nathan—a dark lad with a penchant for chivalry, the second Aidan—intelligent, strong, and increasingly lean (his health was declining due to lack of sleep, unfortunately), and the third was Matthew—a pale, nimble and opinionated person (though his hearing was poor, and perhaps that is why he never quit arguing even after winning an argument).
Now that the introductions are finished, on with the story!
After about a term of freshman year had gone by, Nathan, Aidan, and Matthew thought it best to circulate warnings regarding Sawyer’s late-night waffle-inspired bouts of poetry—though Matthew did the least in this circulation, for he had the least complaint. Indeed, he often contributed to the uproar as he started a spirited argument whether tomb rhymed with bomb. A second example was the night when they both stayed up until four in the morning arguing whether it was permissible to invent words to rhyme with orange. At which point, Aidan exited his room and commanded them to both shut up and go to bed, which they did, and both missed their classes and got marked down.1
In any case, as I was saying (I seem to be sidetracked often here with stories…) the three roommates circulated warnings to stay away from their house (they had been wont to hospitality previously) in order to discourage Sawyer, for he was only encouraged by an audience. “It’s for his own good too,” reasoned Aidan, yawning with exhaustion. Nathan, with which he often sparred, —the two were not altogether fond of each other—nodded in shared sympathy, which said a great deal for their circumstances. The patience of both had been tried, and it had been tried too long.
“Enough.”
“Stay away from Sawyer.”
“Don’t encourage Sawyer.”
“This must end.”
“No more waffles.”
“No more poetry.”
“This must end.”
“Enough.”
But the problem with this method—telling others to stay away—was that Sawyer himself—suffering from male cluelessness—did not know that his midnight verbosities were so greatly affecting his unfortunate roommates. He continued, only slightly bemused at the lack of audiences, and did not cease from his certain waffling.
So things proceeded for another two and a half terms, until they had just half a term remaining. For this impending triumph and farewell, Sawyer decided he would host a nighttime party composed of all his favorite, and loudest2, poets and waffle lovers.
While Aidan, Nathan, and Matthew had done their best to discourage such poetic waffle festivals, it must be said that next to no one listened to Matthew, Nathan was hardly heeded, and Aidan was an introvert who had done the least work discouraging these revelries.
Now it had not only been Sawyer’s roommates upset by the noise. Their place, though toward the edge of town, was still surrounded by neighbors, and by this time they were very annoyed neighbors3. So the night before Sawyer’s festival, when Sawyer was singing one of his original songs at the top of his lungs, they decided that it was time.
If anyone’s curious, here are some of the lyrics.
Waffles, waffles, sweet syrup maple
I will make and eat you long as I’m able
Beauteous squares stiff and soft
How long, how long I loft
Your flag on high, bright waffle day!
Three times to cry, hooray!
No other food, no other flag
No other loyalties to brag!
Surrender not, my heart be ever true
To waffles, sweet waffles, how I love you!
This is but one example of the many odes to waffles composed by Sawyer. But let us continue the story.
Sawyer’s neighbors decided it was time. Next time, they decided, huddling around a fire pit in their backyard, next time they would get him, and they would get him good. This, keep in mind, was the group of young men directly to the left of Sawyer and co, not the family to the right, who were seriously considering reporting him for a noise violation, nor the resident vegans from the local state college across the street, who considered Sawyer’s frequent use of dairy products extremely offensive.
The day of Sawyer’s triumph dawned. He spent all day preparing—it was a Saturday, worry not, he was not missing homework—he had had the day off, though his roommates were working. He spent the entire day belting his original poems and also sea shanties. He was a decent singer, and had amazing durability of voice born from long hours singing and waffle-making.
What else did Sawyer do while singing his heart out?
Ah yes, he made waffles.
Such waffles you have never seen. The batter was creamy, sweet, and perfectly smooth. It never seemed to end as he poured it out onto the collection of waffle irons that were his pride and joy.
Square waffles.
Rectangular waffles.
Round waffles.
Heart-shaped waffles.
Matthew was the first to finish work. He slammed the door open with unnecessary drama and noise, but that was how he worked. His eyes widened to about the size of saucers as he saw the Waffle Epic Battle Royale4 unfolding across the kitchen counter. The waffles, needless to say, were winning. If you were there you could probably have heard the counter screaming under the majestic weight of wafflery upon it.
“Sawyer!” said Matthew in astonishment and immediately pilfered three waffles and stuffed them all into his mouth.
Sawyer did not hear him—he had not even marked his entrance, too lost in poetic wafflation. Matthew sat down and began to finish up the homework he had been procrastinating—even though he had hearing problems, I’m still not sure how he managed to work through Sawyer’s noise.
Nathan arrived next. His entrance was quiet enough that no one would have heard him without Sawyer’s caterwaffling.5 He had just come from fencing practice and was exhausted, not to mention hungry and smelly. He saw the food through blurred eyes and stumbled towards it.
Sawyer never even noticed as Nathan consumed four waffles and crashed into the shower.
A few minutes later, Aidan kicked the door open. His arms were full of empty cardboard boxes, which he dropped on the floor in shock as he saw the result of Sawyer’s activity the past few hours.
“Sawyer,” he said in a low voice.
For some reason, this tone was heard when Nathan’s and Matthew’s had not.
“Yeah?” replied Sawyer, turning to face his irritated roommate.
“Why are there so many waffles? What are you doing?”
Sawyer grinned. “You don’t pay attention very well. I’m having a PARTY tonight! And oh, man, will it be a PARTY!”
Aidan groaned and picked up the cardboard boxes again. He could feel a headache coming on already. “I’m glad you’re moving next year,” he said under his breath as he tromped into his room.
But Sawyer, of course, wasn’t listening. He lofted a waffle on high and began a sort of prancy dance around the kitchen, and then the guests began to arrive.
Sawyer, despite his rather interesting habits, was a rather popular fellow, and so the guests were many.
“All hail the waffle king!” said one impetuous fellow as he entered and beheld the waffle wealth laid before him.
Sawyer bowed. “Rex wafflorum6 I stand, Captain of waffle band!”
“How does he make better waffles than all of us?” asked the guests of the female persuasion as they nibbled on Sawyer’s subcreations.
“Now,” Sawyer proclaimed as he saw with satisfaction the awe of his guests, “Shall we raise our voices in song?”
“Aye aye!”
They began with a hymn or two, but from then progressed to chanties and other raucous celebratorial songs. After a period, Sawyer taught them a song of surpassing wafflery that rang melodically from their lips, an odish hymn to his creations.7
Matthew was in the midst of all these celebrations, occasionally putting in his thoughts—dear reader, we have no idea how he was not arguing over some small issue of waffles—but for the most part somehow ignoring the mob and doing his homework. Nathan was somehow sleeping through it all, but we attribute that to the extraordinary thick walls of the bathroom and the fact that the shower was still running and he was sleeping in it. Aidan was downstairs, suffering through the noise with a migraine on top of it all, trying to start packing up for his trip home in a few days.
Meanwhile, the frenzied festival upstairs reached a crescendo of song.
“What do we eat?” hollered Sawyer melodically.
“WAFFLES!” sang back the throng.
“When do we eat them?”
“NOW!” and suddenly the door was kicked open and a flood of young men poured in through it. They were armed with all manner of weapons—from swords to spatulas. As a matter of fact, it was the neighbor boys.
Their leader, a fellow who resembled Thorin Oakenshield in stature and facial hair, brandished his ladle. “We come to join war against the house of waffles! Join the allegiance of the Pancakes!” And he hurled a ladleful of maple syrup into the face of Sawyer, who had been dancing on the countertop but now leapt onto the floor, snatching up a shofar that lay nearby and blowing a tremendous blast upon it.
“For waffles!” he cried, and hurled the edibles in question at his opponents, who in turn brandished their heretical handfuls of pancakes.
In the still-running, now cold shower, Nathan awoke at the sound of the shofar calling him to combat. Quickly dressing, still sopping wet, he threw open the bathroom door, snatched up the nearest sword and sprinted into the living room, slipping on the water still falling from his drenched hair.
Sawyer’s band and the fellows from next door both stopped dead still in the middle of hurling edibles at each other.
“Choose a side!” they hollered, and went back to doing what they were doing. Nathan crammed a waffle down his gullet for sustenance and joined the Waffle Army. For all his waffling, he was quite fond of Sawyer and his waffles.
As for Aidan, he did his valiant best to ignore the whole kerfuffle. And Matthew? He still sat, somehow, in the middle of the thing, finishing up his homework.
But soon the house could not contain the reveling battlers and the fight poured out onto the hillside between the two houses. Their battle cries were varied, ranging from “PANCAKES!” to “WAFFLES!”
“I can’t take it anymore,” said one of the vegans from across the street as he watched the flagrant waste of dairy products flying in the form of waffles and pancakes willy-nilly and higgledy-piggledy.
“It’s time,” they said, “for those wasters to get their come-uppance!” They ordered a pile of vegetables and fruits on DoorDash. It arrived surprisingly quickly, and the DoorDash driver, with nothing better to do, stood bemusedly watching as the group of young college-age men took the ginormous box of vegetables and fruit, ran across the street, and started throwing them into the mob.
“FOR COWS!” they cried, and the waffle-and-pancake lovers looked up at the cry just to receive tomatoes to the face. They immediately abandoned their dispute with each other in their mutual dislike for the vegans and returned waffle—because the pancakers had just about run out, not being quite as industrious as Sawyer.
“FOR WAFFLES!” screamed Sawyer at the top of his lungs, and in that moment he managed to reach a higher level of decibel than any other human has before. You see, he’d been practicing his entire life for this grand moment.
When the father of the family to the other side issued from the house and started yelling for quiet, the DoorDash driver decided to call 911.
Sawyer stood side by side with Nathan on the front lines; Sawyer wielded a waffle flipper that hurled waffles well and he never seemed to run out; Nathan swung a merciless sword. Then Sawyer lifted his voice in a glad battle song and gradually all the young men on his side took up the cry till the field rang with the waffle cry.
Then, at the end of all waffles, when peaches flew and syrup dripped from the limbs of every fighter on that field, came the sound of sirens and a vision, all too real, of red and blue lights flashing doom.
Then, as suddenly as they had come, the vegans melted away from vision, leaving their only trace on the splattered squash and tomatoes and peaches strewn across the field of battle.
The dad of the neighbor family stood confusedly but grateful, wondering who had called the cops in his stead.
The DoorDash driver explained the situation to the police.
Then the police turned their attention to the mess of about sixty teenage boys standing stickily before them. Where the girls had gone, no one knows to this day, but their skedaddlement was probably best.
But when the situation had been explained and propounded and Sawyer blamed for it, they looked all over for him, but he was nowhere to be found, and neither was his collection of waffle irons. He had disappeared like the fog over the barrows when the sun rises.
Truth in certainty ceases at this moment, but legends still tell that, to this day, deep in the woods somewhere between Canada and Washington, if one wanders at the midnight hours, one might find a collection of waffle irons, magically running, tended by a young man chanting and singing original Latin poetry over his creations.
But don’t take my word for it.
Appendices
Thanks to my companions at
for helping me figure out how to end this thing. I ended up taking a lot of ’s suggestions.His neighbors in retaliation announce that they will be hosting a pancake dinner to try and attract everyone away from Sawyer's party.
And if you're gonna do that8, you might as well add the angry neighbors and the vegans to make this the War of the Five Armies.9
Thanks, Turner!
Here’s some other alternate endings suggested by other members.
Alternate Ending #1
His roommates kick him out because he’s being too loud and he stumbles upon a girl singing love songs to pancakes in the moonlight. They go have breakfast together. The end.
Alternate Ending #2
Plot twist! He dies because of eating too many waffles!
Alternate Ending #3
He builds his own city out of waffles and makes himself the mayor!
Alternate Ending #4
He dies of a broken heart because nobody else likes waffles as much as he does and his family leaves waffles at his grave instead of flowers.
Alternate Title (self)
The title originally thought of for this piece was “The Unlawful Waffle Kerfuffle.”
Previous Silly Food Stories
You can find the one about Potatoes here.
And this is the one about Onions. It’s not really a romance, (though there is one) but more of a joke.
Thanks everyone! If you got this far, go ahead and drop a comment, like this thing, and subscribe, because if you have enough dedication to put up with Sawyer’s tomfoolery, you definitely have enough to put up with mine.
Ciao!
Don’t stay up too late at college, kids. It has consequences.
It’s a wonder Sawyer himself wasn’t yet deaf. I predict early hearing aids for this boy.
Come to think of it, how did Sawyer get his homework done like this? Regular wonder boy.
TradeMarked
Yeah, I know, that was a really bad pun. Sorry.
A direct quote.
I did not predict the cult coming on this strong.
Add the police
Inspired by the Thorin Oakenshield comparison. And it’s the Battle of the Five Armies, but I didn’t tell him that.
Okay now you're making me want to eat some waffles....
I laughed a lot :) Keep up the great work, Glori!