Code Name Waffle

Remember how when you were, oh, 12 or 13, you and your friends would have huge crushes on people and you'd absolutely have to talk about them and write notes to each other about them and be all into them and possible never talk to the actual person but that wasn't the point? And remember how it was dangerous to use the crush's real name because, hi, notes get intercepted and fellow school bus riders have remarkably sharp hearing when they want to? And remember how then you'd have to create these really complicated code names for said crush that were logically derived from their real names? Remember?

Oh. No?

Okay, well, some of us did that. And let me tell you, it was a complex system. You had to keep track of which crush each name referred to. Sometimes a crush would have more than one code name, just in case an outsider might start to figure out to whom you were referri ng.

My big seventh grade crush was this kid named Zach Montoya. Oh, I thought he was dreamy with his shaggy dark hair and brown eyes and fairly large nose. We christened him Waffle. You get it, right? Right?

Right?

All right, I'll walk you through it – it won't take long. It was the early nineties. A popular television commercial at the time featured a kid who played with Legos like they might crumble before his little eyes. The commercial tag line was, “Zack! Zack! He's a lego maniac!” From there, we got Lego, which inevitably led to “Leggo my Eggo!”, and from there, to Waffle. (We were 12. For us, that WAS really complicated.)

Sadly, things weren't meant to be for me and young Zachary. I was incredibly shy, my hair was so permed you could have scrubbed out pots with my head, and Zach had no idea I existed, at least not as a girl you could, like, go out with. He did ask for math help once. And I moved on to a boy who didn't go to my school so we could just talk about him using his real name (Brian Joyce! Who was much cuter than Zach, actually, and who actually liked me back, and who actually asked me out to see Benny and Joon and then some french fries at Paul's Place, which was my first real date, unless you count the time Ryan Nelsch took me to see The Aristocats in second grade but I don't because my mom made me go on that one).

Perhaps we should go back to using code names - people do it on blogs all the time. Me, I'm not all that anonymous, nor do all that many people actually read this and I think everyone who does knows me in real life, so I don't bother. But should I start referring to Ben and Wilbert and everyone by other names? I'm open to suggestions.