66 Days - The Nicest Guy In The World

By Kevin Childre
T.o.P. Senior Editor













The nicest guy in the world!

That’s what most people think of when they meet Wayne Centrone; he picks up litter as he walks down the street, he’s a public health doctor that tends to the at-risk population in Portland, and spends a good portion of the year in Peru taking care of the health needs among the poor. Add to this, his ability on the bike that will leave all of us gasping. But it wasn’t always this way – under the now cool façade, the worldly wisdom, hides a guy who, not so many years ago had trouble facing his own reflection in the mirror.

How’s that, you ask?

Well, let me take a moment to paint the past.

Wayne was once, like most of us, searching for his place in the pecking order. He was out of college, living back at home, and trying to find a job. His basic day consisted of riding his bike, swimming, running, and hanging out on my couch chewing bags full of bubble gum and pulling the perfumed inserts out of Margaret’s copies of Glamour magazine (honest, the articles can be insightful). All this time he felt as though he was missing something – I tried to explain that what was missing was a job, and who in their right mind needed that.



Finally, he landed the big one, a position in a local beach restaurant as a waiter – please refer back to the mirror thing. Unfortunately, this particular eating establishment catered primarily to the Snow-Birds migrating from Canada – a population not readily known for their generosity toward the “help”. For the first couple of weeks, Wayne would dutifully go to work, eight or more hours later, he would doggedly drag his self home – or at least back to my house. He’d plop back down on the couch, bubble gum and Glamour at the ready.












“How did it go today?” I’d ask, “how did you do for tips?”

Looking down, three or four pieces of gum stuffed in his cheeks, he’d shamefully reply, “I made three dollars”.

“THREE DOLLARS”, I’d shout, “you were there all day!”

“Those Snow Birds”, I thought, “can’t they see this poor kid needs a break?”


So we decided to help him out, all his close friends headed down for an early dinner. We sat at one big table, Wayne sauntered up – ok, that was a stretch – the whole mirror thing again. In reality he kept his eyes locked on the floor, mumbled out a few unintelligible words, took our drink orders and disappeared. Now it is important to realize that we were the only customers in the place, it’s not as though he had to balance our orders and needs against those of the other tables – WE WERE THE ONLY ONES, and we were his friends.














After what seemed like hours, a few of us got up, fetched drinks, and went in search of our “waiter”. He shyly came back out, the process was repeated for the food order – of which I could never really say that we ever received. At the end of a painfully awkward dining experience, we paid the bill – leaving a 200% tip, and came to a full realization that the $3.00 tips he averaged made him highly overpaid. I want you to remember this story at the end of day 3, 115 miles of hills that will leave the rest of us hobbling to the hot tub in search of salvation, while Wayne is looking like he’d only ridden to the local coffee hut for a Cinnamon Dolce.