Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends (15 page)
Read Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends Online
Authors: Jan Harold Harold Brunvand
“Let’s Give Toll Takers a Hand”
I
was in Johns Hopkins Medical School at the time. As a prank, somebody cut one of the fingers off the cadaver I was working on and kept it. When I went to turn in the cadaver, I couldn’t account for the finger.
I knew who’d done it. So the next day, while he was doing a dissection on the leg, I took the arm off his cadaver and snuck it out. I put it in an ice chest and drove out to the Beltway around Baltimore. At a tollbooth, I stuck the frozen arm out of the window with some money in the hand and left the toll attendant with the arm.
This got back to the president of the school, who was Dwight Eisenhower’s brother, Milton, a real fucking hawk. He told me to take a leave of absence to reconsider my commitment to medical school. I thought that was probably a good idea. I said, “Great.” A week later I had my draft notice. They turned me right in to the board.
From Mark Baker’s 1981 book
Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There.
This prank, much discussed among medical students, is very seldom claimed as a first-person escapade, and has never, to my knowledge, been reported by toll takers as an actual incident in their professional experience. Still, the story is attached to numerous toll highways and bridges all over the United States and in several foreign countries. If we accept this Vietnam veteran’s claim, we have a rare instance of a traditional prank story being acted out in real life. An illuminating study of such stories is Frederic W. Hafferty’s 1988 article in the
Journal of Health and Social Behavior,
“Cadaver Stories and the Emotional Socialization of Medical Students.” Dr. Hafferty found that, although these accounts always include references to supposedly real people, places, and things, the incidents themselves are complete fabrications. With constant variations in details coming about as they circulate, cadaver stories are a major part of medical student folklore.
“The Bargain Sports Car”
A
friend of the guy who told me this story, sometime in the mid-1970s, needed to get another car, since his old one was falling apart and barely running any more. All he could afford was another used car, so he started reading the want ads looking for a bargain.
He saw an ad for a ’65 Chevy for sale at $200, so he called the number. The woman who answered sounded elderly, and she said that the car was still for sale and the price was as advertised. So he got his old clunker started and went over to take a look at the old Chevy.
The old woman took him out to the garage, and when she opened the door and pulled off a tarp covering the car, he couldn’t believe his eyes. It was a 1965 Corvette, bright red, up on blocks, mint condition, and not a scratch on it.
He held his breath as he got out his checkbook, poised his pen over it, and asked one more time, “Two hundred bucks?”
“Yes,” the old woman said. She explained that her son had left the car with her when he was sent to Vietnam, but he was killed in action. She now just wanted to get rid of it and the memories that it inspired, so she called a car dealer and asked how much a 1965 Chevy might be worth, and he said maybe $200. “Is that too much?” she asked. “After all, it’s ten years old, and it’s pretty small; it only holds two people.”
The friend of a friend assured her that this was not too high a price to ask for the car.
Much told in the post-Nam years, but never verified. This is a wishful-thinking story along the lines of “The $50 Porsche” legend in Chapter 3, but minus the revenge motif. In another version the would-be buyer cannot make it to the seller’s home right away. When he gets there the next day, he sees his lost prize, the vintage Corvette, just rounding the corner with the lucky buyer at the wheel. Prices vary in these stories from $100 to $500, but the make and model of car is consistent. There are, of course, many other stories of people selling valuable items for a ridiculously low price, and some of these stories are even true.
Movies, TV, advertising,
and politics, among other areas of life, are saturated with sexual content and innuendo, so it’s no surprise that urban legends exploit the sexual theme as well. There are many ULs concerning sex, and I’ve scattered most of them through this book according to their other themes, reserving the present chapter for just a few of the more saucy examples. Surprisingly, most legends that mention sex are fairly innocuous, in contrast to sex
jokes,
at least. But the sexcapade legends still shock us because they seem so lifelike and plausible. Take “The Husband Monitor,” for example. The story itself might rate only a PG-13, but it suggests the strong possibility that such an embarrassing incident could easily have happened to anyone:
In a home’s upstairs nursery a couple of modern young husbands were changing their babies’ diapers while their wives were downstairs getting dinner on the table. The nursery had a baby monitor installed; it’s something like a little radio with the microphone in the baby’s room and the receiver carried around as the parent works elsewhere in the house, so the parent can hear if the baby cries.
The husbands were unaware that the monitor was turned on.
The receiver was downstairs with the wives.
The husbands began to discuss in somewhat graphic and personal terms what the presence of a newborn in their household had done to their sex lives. Every word they said was broadcast directly to their wives.
More deserving of an X rating is an urban legend that we might call “A Dog’s Life” this one has been going around for the past few years:
Coworkers of a pretty, unmarried young woman decided to give her a surprise birthday party. They managed to get into her house and hide in the basement waiting for her to come home from work. One of them had previously dog-sat for her while the woman was away on vacation, so she had no difficulty keeping the woman’s Great Dane quiet while they waited.
The young woman was heard to arrive home and go into the shower. Her friends waited patiently. Finally they heard her come out of the shower, and she came to the basement door calling her dog, “Rex, Rex. Come here, Rex. Mama’s got a treat for you.”
The dog bounded up the stairs, and the coworkers sneaked up quietly, then burst into the kitchen shouting “Surprise!”
The surprise was on them: the young woman was naked and had smeared peanut butter on her body. Rex was eagerly licking it off.
The theme of, shall we say,
indiscretion
revealed in both stories, and the variation on the familiar surprise-party plot in the second, clearly mark these two stories as urban legends, whatever grain of truth they may contain. Besides, you always hear about things like this at hairdressing salons and at parties, not on the evening news or in reputable newspapers. And if you’ve been paying attention so far in this book, you’ll know that there are always some variations in details, as in the above example, the breed of dog, the hiding place, the fine points of the victim’s peanut-butter application, and her response to the surprise.
An old sex legend that’s been brought up-to-date is one I call “Dear Old Dad.” In earlier times the story concerned a sheriff and deputy, or two cops—a veteran and a rookie. One version:
One Saturday night they were patrolling in their squad car, and in a dark area of a closed cemetery they saw a car parked with its lights off. The rookie cop went up to the car and found a teenage couple making love in the back seat. He told them to stay put and went back to ask his partner what to do.
The old cop chuckled and said, “Just tell that guy that you will arrest them both and turn them over to their parents unless he lets us both have sex with his girlfriend.” The teens were terrified, and agreed.
After the rookie cop had his turn and went back to the squad car, the veteran policeman said, “Now it’s my turn.” He went up to the car, shined his flashlight into it, and recognized his own daughter crouched there, wide-eyed and trembling.
Some versions of the story describe a businessman on an out-of-town trip who visits a prostitute who turns out to be his runaway daughter. The spin on this one is that instead of repenting and coming back home, the girl blackmails her father.
In its latest form, “Dear Old Dad” concerns a couple who meet in cyberspace under assumed names. After months of exchanging highly erotic talk in an Internet sex-chat room, the couple decide to meet in a hotel room. There, after a naked embrace in the dark they turn on the lights, and…you guessed it—Dear Old Dad and Darling Daughter meet again.
“Gay Pride, No Ride”
An airline employee whose last name was “Gay” boarded a plane using his company pass. Finding his assigned seat occupied, Mr. Gay took another vacant seat nearby. But before the plane took off, another flight was canceled, and flight attendants were told that they had to pull nonpaying passengers off the plane to make room for ticketed passengers.
A flight attendant came down the aisle and asked the occupant of Mr. Gay’s assigned seat, “Are you gay?” The man looked surprised, but he answered, “Well, yes I am.”
“Then you’ll have to get off the plane,” the flight attendant said.
Overhearing this exchange, the employee named Gay spoke up, saying, “No, No,
I’m
Gay, and I’m the one who will have to get off.”Immediately two men sitting nearby jumped up and said, “Well we’re gay too, and they can’t make us
all
get off!”
“The Stuck Couple”
A
friend of a friend was getting ready to go out one evening, when he noticed from his bedroom window that there was a car blocking the mouth of the drive. As he had some time to spare, he ignored it, expecting it to go away. However, nearly an hour later he found that it was still there, and as he could see no signs of life, he walked down to investigate. There, inside, was a couple, coupled. “Thank God you’ve come,” shouted the man. “Something’s gone in my back, and I can’t move.” So the FOAF went back and called the police, and they called an ambulance and the fire brigade. The upshot of it was that the firemen had to cut the top off the car to lift the man out. While they were waiting for the other stretcher, the officer-in-charge said to the woman: “I’m frightfully sorry that we’ve had to cut up your husband’s car.” She smiled wanly, and replied: “That’s all right. It’s not my husband.”
From Rodney Dale’s 1978 book
The Tumour in the Whale.
Another English version—the more common one that describes the couple stuck while having sex in a Mini [tiny British car] in a public square—appears in Paul Smith’s 1983
The Book of Nasty Legends.
In
The Choking Doberman
I discuss how medical authorities have debunked the idea that humans can actually become “stuck” during intercourse; one well-known supposed instance of
penis captivus
turned out to have been a hoax. Stuck-couple stories in ancient myths and legends were reborn in modern folklore as car/sex legends, sometimes taking other traditional forms, such as this limerick:
There once was a fellow named Brett,
Loved a girl in his shiny Corvette;
We know it’s absurd
But the last that we heard
They haven’t untangled them yet.
“Stick-Shift Frenzy”
O
h, V——, something terrible happened to a girl at our school. She was at a party when some boys thought it would be a good joke to put a Spanish Fly in her drink. (You know what it is don’t you?) If you don’t, it’s something that makes you want to go
all the way!
Well anyway after drinking her drink, she told her boyfriend to meet her out in the car. When he went out there, she had f——herself to death (No lie) on the gearshift. This is true. It was in the papers even.
From a letter handwritten by one teenage girl to another in 1959 or 1960, sent to me in 1984 by an Oregon educator who had happened to save it among some miscellaneous school papers. This alleged incident, often set in a drive-in theater, was widely believed by teens in the 1950s. The writer here displays a charming mix of modesty and forthrightness as she tells the story. But obviously, she does not realize that “Spanish Fly” is a substance, not a thing. The supposed aphrodisiac effects of cantharis, as it’s called, made from dried Spanish, or blister, beetles
(Lytta vesicatoria)
were believed in by many young people who had never actually seen the stuff nor had any idea what it was or how to obtain it. “The Girl on the Gearshift Lever” legend faded with the introduction of steering-post shift levers and automatic transmission; one wonders if we’ll be hearing the story again as stick shift once more becomes a popular option. Frankly, I hope not.
“The Bothered Bride” and “The Grumbling Groom”
S
tunned wedding guests are still talking about a posh California ceremony that began as a happy event—but wound up with a shocking finale.
The bride and groom, an unidentified couple from Simi Valley, Calif., never went through with their marriage because the bride revealed a little secret just as they were tying the knot, according to Los Angeles society columnist Mary Louise Oates.
The young lady walked down the aisle in her gorgeous gown, joined the groom, the maid of honor, and the best man at the altar—then whispered to the minister that she wanted to make a little speech.
First she thanked her parents for their love and support, for all they had done for her throughout the years, for the love and planning they had lavished on her beautiful wedding. Guests were filled with emotion.
Then she thanked her friends for their devotion, for their kindness and affection, for the presents they had showered on her on the happy occasion.
Friends and relatives choked back their tears.
Finally, the bride turned her attentions to her maid of honor.
“And I would like to thank the maid of honor,” she said sweetly.
“I would like to thank her for sleeping with my groom last night.”
With that, the blushing bride left the church, amid gasps and whispers.
She did not look back—and she did not toss her bouquet to the guests.
The bride’s father—shocked but chivalrous—invited the wedding guests to a reception, explaining that it would be a shame to waste the elaborate preparations.
Apparently, the bride did not attend—and neither did the groom or maid of honor.
[Caption, on a photograph of a blindfolded bride: “The identity of the bride was withheld to save her from any further embarrassment.”]
D
early Believed
The Bridegroom’s Revenge: A Myth Too Good to Be Untrue
Some stories are just too good to spoil with the facts.
Here’s one: A big wedding, very lavish and stylish. At the reception, the best man gets up to make the toast. The groom hops to his feet and says he’d like to say something first:
Thank you all for coming, and for your lovely gifts. But I am going to honeymoon in Hawaii and the bride is going to Aruba, and when we come back the marriage will be annulled. And if you want to know why, look under your plates. (In some versions, he says look under your chairs.)
In yet another version, he just holds up the under-your-plate or under-your-chair picture: the bride and the best man in what is called a “compromising position” in polite company. He leaves.
Gasps. Fainting. But the party continues.
In some versions he and the bride leave, after some breakage of glass.
As with other urban myths (alligators in the sewer, people being kidnapped for body parts, movie stars appearing in emergency rooms with gerbil troubles), many people swear this story is true. They have heard it on the radio. They know someone who knows someone who was there. In some cases
they were actually there themselves.
But it didn’t happen.
One source said a friend heard this story at a hotel in New Hampshire while checking in to attend another wedding.
“I’ve heard that,” said Gene Bryant, director of sales at the Clarion-Somerset Hotel in Nashua. “Just when you think you’ve heard everything…I’ll ask someone on the banquet staff and call you back.”
He called back. “It did not happen here,” said Bryant. “But it did happen in New Hampshire. Someone on our staff heard it on the radio. I think it was KISS 108.”
That would be WXKS in Medford, Mass. Seems it has a morning show with a feature about weird weddings. Listeners call in to share.
A version of the tale was spread on the Internet, too, by someone who heard the best-man-and-bride story on a radio station in Chicago. In this version the groom had taped an 8-by-10 manilla folder (note the precision of the details) to the bottom of every chair, directed the guests to open their surprise and waited for them to see the picture. He then turned to the best man and said “[Expletive] you,” and then to the bride, and said the same thing.
