Looking for the Real Wayne Wells

An email arrived from Wayne Wells the other day. A short one. He didn’t include a photo, and after fifteen years a person needs to be reminded of what his friends look like. I did a Google image search, and most of the results were wrong. Three pictures, however, seem about right.

In Wayne Wells 1 the bowtie is right, but the hair is questionable. Too straight. The thought passing through this person’s mind, however, is the most telling evidence. Obviously he is listening to a woman explain why she does not need a new Electrolux, and he is thinking, “Lady, I can find so much dirt in your house that you will beg me for the Diamond Jubilee model.”

Wayne Wells 2 is problematic because I can’t tell whether Wayne Wells is meant to be the upper or the lower. My opinion is that Wells is the upper figure, because this is the way he used to settle who would pay for fajitas whenever he was in Waco. I never knew him to have to pay.

Wayne Wells 3 is the most likely of all. I admit the hair is wrong. Too straight again. But it is only temporarily straight, because while warming the audience for the Beastie Boys in Chattanooga, he noticed the elders of his church come in wearing suits and stern looks. (The picture taken immediately after this one does not show Wayne’s face, but his hair is in its normal tight curls again after he learned that the men were not his elders after all, but actors who had come straight from the set of a new C.I.A. thriller being shot on Lookout Mountain.)

What a wonderful time to be alive! You can not only use the internet to reconnect with old friends, you can also see what they look like in the present day.