Waffle

My Uncle Bill and Aunt Dixie lived on the edge of town – or so they called it. Really it was an eclectic hodgepodge of matchbox houses sparsely littering the banks of the Mississippi River.

Each morning at the crack o' dawn, Uncle Bill would feed his little lady, Waffle. Shuffling out the front door in his slippers, he would spit to raise hell and mutter loudly,

"Where in tarnation is that blasted creature?!"

Sure enough, the too-big-for-her-britches Waffle would appear from her nightly hiding spot and dance her way into my uncle's weathered arms. Oh how the tawdry neighbors and their red Cadillac looked down on my uncle's profound attachment to that duck, but he didn't seem to mind.

"Waffle girl" was family. To this day, I'm not entirely sure she was a girl...but Uncle Bill enjoyed the company of his little lady. And so the name stuck.