One night at dinner on the cruise, the waiter was David. He was possibly the oldest crew member on the ship. He was a little guy with an overgrown haircut of gray hair.

It turns out that he was from Traverse City which is about two hours north of our home in Grand Rapids.

He was pretty funny and also helped us avoid the “less excellent” menu items.

We didn’t learn his name until later in the meal. At the beginning of the meal, he mentioned that one customer looked at David’s name tag, missed the bit that read “DAVID”, misread the bit that said “WAITER” and figured that his name was “Walter”.

Since he still hadn’t told us his real name, we started calling him Walter. Fortunately, by desert time we’d finally figured out his real name and started using that.

We were planning on asking for David for our next reservation. It would’ve been awkward if we’d asked for Walter.