Law on Rice

I don’t know if I was just there on a good night, but something about this Waffle House made a tired student grin from ear to ear.

I went to the Waffle House on an anonymous strip mall on an anonymous intersection on the anonymous border between Tempe and Mesa because I figured it would be a good place to study late Friday night–at least before the bars closed.

I took a seat at the loners’ counter, looking for an anonymous place to sit and study in a place bathed in alarmingly white fluorescent lights.  The humming of those lights was all I could hear, at first… well, that and the buzzing of the refrigerator and that sizzling sound coming from the kitchen.

Then there was noise.

The girls were talking about who baby daddy doin’ what and what not and then the jukebox.  Michael Jackson, to be precise.  The entire restaurant sang along softly.  I mean, everyone including the customers (well, except me).

It compelled me to post this over the top tweet.

The desert is quiet, especially at night when you can often hear nothing more than buzzing refrigerators and the servo click of air conditioners turning on down the street.  I hate silence.  I’ve had way too much of it in my lifetime.  But places like this so-called anonymous Waffle House fill the desert with sound and light.  And that makes me happy.