Eddie Malone is the reason manufacturers put warning labels on products.
It wasn’t exactly his fault, but Eddie was one of those kids who had to try everything. When we were in second grade, the teacher wrote on the board: DO NOT EAT THE PASTE.
Eddie read it, then looked at the white stuff in the large jar which sat in the middle of our little circle. We were busy pasting our collages together. Eddie smelled the paste. Then looked at us. We looked at him. In went his finger for a large gob and into his mouth it went. We waited. He chewed, then swallowed.
“Eddie is eating the paste!” yelled Linda, a little redhead who sat next to me and who at one point in time I actually thought I would marry some day, but that’s another story.
The teacher grabbed Eddie by the collar, lifting him up off the floor, which was considered non-capital punishment at the time.
“How much?” she demanded.
Eddie held up his index finger, indicating one finger full, thank you.
She put him down.
“Go stand in the corner.”
Much conjecture followed in our little circle regarding the fate of both the paste and of Eddie. If it were made to stick things together, wouldn’t certain parts of Eddie stick together? We all wondered how everything would work out in the end.
Eddie made a full recovery, however, apparently due to either his metabolism or the fact that the paste was non-toxic. Teachers know kids.
Through the years, a steady stream of Eddie stories followed. Some were based on dare, others on, well, Eddie. Eddie was the kind of kid to whom everything seemed to happen.
Like when he was riding Crazy Leo’s bike, one of the first off road bikes invented. Leo decided that if you could ride a bike on the road, why not ride it in the woods? Break new ground. He removed the fenders, bent the handle bars so they would fit between trees better, put the largest tires he could find on it and removed the chain guard. Eddie, having heard about the new invention, naturally had to try it out.
“It is not safe,” we warned him.
“Heck, it’s just a bike,” he replied. “This will be fun.”
Halfway through a small stretch of woods at Leo’s house, Eddie realized several things: one, always duck when branches are coming, make sure you watch out for large rocks and fallen branches, and don’t forget to check the brakes before you ride. Leo had removed the brakes because they were getting in the way.
It was actually pretty entertaining watching Eddie on his trial ride. Today, he probably could have been a fine candidate for the X games, in fact. There was the up in the air over the rock maneuver, the branch in the face, and, finally, the long swift ride into the brook, as Eddie frantically tried to find a brake.
“Nice ride,” we assured him as he limped home.
In shop class in high school, the teacher always kept an eye on Eddie. Eddie was the kind of kid who would walk over to a jointer, ask “What’s this for?” then proceed to flip the switch and send a piece of the nearest wood through it, sometimes with disastrous results.
After repeated training and practice, he was finally allowed to plane a piece of wood for the project he was making, a wheelbarrow planter. He started the planer, then carefully fed the wood through. When he finished, he noticed he had also shaved the end of his fingernail off.
He had just finished off the last nail trimming when the teacher observed his new use for the planer. Eddie was confined to hammers and such after that.
As he got older, things didn’t change. Take the time we were helping Eddie clean out his new apartment so he could move in. The sink cabinet was a particular mess, filled with leftover bottles and cans of various concoctions.
Eddie pulled out one ominous looking bottle with no label on it.
“What’s this?” he asked, removing the cap.
Before we could say don’t do that, Eddie held it up to his nose and took a deep whiff.
Ammonia.
What followed was a combination gagging, eye watering kind of reaction which, frankly, was hard to describe. It was as if he had just swallowed a bottle of the world’s hottest hot sauce whole.
Then there was the time at college when he was dared to actually down a bottle of hot sauce. He read the label, then down it went, followed by a similar reaction to the ammonia. Eddie could be a slow learn at times.
Now admittedly, there were no warning labels on any of the above items or on any of the other items Eddie ingested, rode, threw, wore or smelled. Eddie, we figured, was one of a kind. Besides, people with any amount of common sense knew better than to try the things he tried. Had there been a warning label, Eddie would not have heeded it anyway. What was the point?
We all wondered where Eddie would wind up in life and at a recent reunion we found out. A test pilot? A quality control expert for some large manufacturer? Nope. He is a lawyer. You guessed it: he is one of those guys who helps “victims” sue large corporations and firms who have not sufficiently warned buyers through warning labels or other directions about doing stupid things. I guess you never know where someone will wind up in life.
The above is an excerpt from the book Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sanity… by Dick Martin, a Glocester resident, former Burrillville High School teacher and contributor for NRI NOW.
Martin can be contacted at [email protected].
