Eddie

I met Eddie while caddying at Piping Rock Club in 1966. He was a senior at Chaminade High School, a Catholic school in Mineola. Eddie lived in Hicksville, about ten miles from Piping Rock, but he liked all the guys that caddied at the club, so he didn't mind the drive.

Up to that point in my life, Eddie was the most intelligent person I had ever met. He possessed a voluminous vocabulary and had a razor-sharp wit. He also had a self-destructive streak which only added to his legend. Eddie fascinated me.

The custom at the club was for caddies to get there as early as possible and sign in. This often left us two hours or so to get breakfast before the first golfers showed up. Sometimes we read the paper, or just walked around and talked.

One day, Eddie and I were walking around, talking, and enjoying the early morning sunshine. At Piping Rock, a very exclusive, blue-blood, old-money club, members were in the habit of bringing their dogs and just letting them have the run of the place.

As we were walking, Eddie said, "Look, that dog's an aberration," pointing at a short dog, with a long body and short hair. It also had a long, hairy snout. It was revoltingly ugly.

I had no idea what an aberration was.

"What do you mean?" I asked confusedly, "like a Dalmatian?" thinking he meant a particular breed of dog.

Eddie laughed so hard he spilled his coffee and almost fell to the ground.

"Come one, Eddie," I pleaded, "please tell me what you mean!"

"No, Leper," Eddie said sanctimoniously, using a nickname I detested, but it was one that did stick, unfortunately. "I'm afraid you're going to have to look that one up," he continued like some deranged English professor.

So I went home that afternoon and looked up aberration. Then I felt like a freak of nature. But I learned a valuable lesson from Eddie that day, one that would serve me well in my chosen profession as an English teacher: use your intelligence and advanced vocabulary to help people and not to ridicule them.

Two years later, when I was leaving the country to serve in the Peace Corps in West Africa, Eddie did it to me again. At the airport gate at JFK, he gave me a book about one of the first Peace Corps volunteers in 1961. In it, Eddie had written, Leper, your altruism is commendable. After the aberration episode, I knew better than to ask Eddie what altruism meant. When I arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone a few days later, I went to the library and looked it up. As intelligent as Eddie was, I knew that he didn't always put the welfare of others before his own.