In my mom’s family, if you are dishing up food and you take a little extra from an adjoining piece, you will quickly be labeled a “Leonard Koeppel”. For example, if you are grabbing a slice of pizza and you accidentally get a little cheese and/or toppings from a connected piece, you would be considered a Leonard Koeppel. As far as I know, nobody in the family knows who Leonard Koeppel is or was; he is lost to history.

Think about that for a second! Oh, the notoriety! Here is a guy who lived and died and did who knows what in his life and his only legacy on this earth is stealing corners from other people’s food! How often would you have to do that in order for your name to become synonymous with the act? I don’t know who invented toilet paper, but I sure can tell you that that S.O.B. Leonard Koeppel would just as soon steal the corner of your pie as look at you!

How would something like that spread? Did he really steal corners so much that he was renowned through out the family or some geographic region for doing it? I’d like to think that he stole a corner from the wrong hombre who decided to begin a campaign of defamement and name bismirchment against ole Leonard.

So here’s to Leonard Koeppel, whoever he is, that any of us could have only half the fame and legacy that he has achieved.