Don't Be An Egghead

Everyone grows up with a cast of characters.  I like to think that a childhood should be filled with those people that you tell stories about and, years later, wonder, “What ever happened to so and so?” Growing up in my neighborhood in Brooklyn I had those characters.  They weren’t ideal.  Drunks, drug addicts and just plain crazies but they were my characters.  They made for a good laugh and an occasional “Wow – so sad”.

My favorite of them was a guy named Egghead.  I don’t know how he came to be known as Egghead but that is what the neighborhood kids – including my parent’s – called him.   He came around once or twice a year and would walk up and down my street for a few days each time.  That doesn’t seem weird right?  Except that Egghead would have a brown paper bag attached to his face filled with glue.  He would huff on this bag up and down the street occasionally stopping on the bench across from my house for a five-minute fresh air break. My dad would run to the window and be like “Eggheads back!” and for a moment we would cheer. Then we would just watch him.  I never knew where Egghead went the rest of the year.  I envisioned him wandering down someone else’s street in some other neighborhood for a change of scenery.  He might even change up the contents in his paper bag for all I knew.   A little paint thinner.  Maybe a little propane.  My favorite thought was that he actually went home to some sprawling estate in Connecticut where he wore an ascot and drank expensive sherry.  When asked where he’d been he would, in proper English of course, respond that he’d been visiting an old friend.  And then he would hang his head and chuckle.  Anyway Egghead was oblivious to his celebrity in our area.  He would shuffle about, eyes glazed, paper bag on display for all to see.  Cops never bothered him; no one ever really said a word. It was like you were at the zoo.  Sitting on my front stoop watching Egghead parade up and down the street you really got the sense he just did not care.  He never ever spoke but one day one of the kids, almost too happy to see him, yelled, “What’s up Egghead?” and for a brief moment he came to life and replied “Stiff dicks and airplanes!  Talk about a comeback!  That made our day and every day after that we’d see him.  That’s the only thing he ever said. Recently my cousin was over and we were reminiscing about all these characters.  I brought up Egghead and mentioned that I hadn’t seen him around in years.  “Oh” she said.  “He died”.  For a moment I felt a small pang of disappointment that one of my childhood human attractions was never coming back. And then all I could say was “Wow – so sad”.