Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends (51 page)

“The Veterans’ Insurance Dividend”

PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG TO YOUR PARENT, OR FRIEND, IF NOT APPLICABLE TO YOURSELF

Insurance Refund For World War 2 Veterans

A Bill was passed in Congress (CSSB 102) recently which will give all World War 2 Veterans a dividend of 65 cents per $1,000 of their GI insurance for each month of service. This refund is due regardless of whether or not the insurance is still carried. THE DIVIDEND CANNOT BE RECEIVED UNLESS IT IS REQUESTED.

The Veterans Administration is urging all WW 2 Vets to apply regardless of whether any insurance is held. The V.A. will check for eligibility. The refunds are not going to make anyone rich but a couple of hundred dollars is always nice. For example, a Vet who had $10,000 in insurance would be entitled to dividends of $79.00 for 12 months service. $156.00 for 24 months, $234.00 for 36 months, etc. The form below contains all the required information. Please use it and also pass on the information to friends. The bill has not been widely publicized so please help spread the word.

TO: VETERANS ADMINISTRATION

REGIONAL OFFICE AND INSURANCE CENTER

P.O. BOX 8079

PHILADELPHIA PA 19101

Dear Sir or Madam,

I, ______________hereby apply for a dividend of 65 cents for each $1,000 of GI insurance for each month of service. Below is specific information.

Name______________________________________________________

Address __________________________________________________

City, State, Zip _________________________________________

Social Security #_________________________________________

Serial Number ____________________________________________

Branch of Service_________________________________________

Date of Service___________________________________________

Date of Discharge_________________________________________

Sincerely,

A frequently reappearing flier warning veterans not to miss out on a bonus allegedly owed to them by the government. Such bogus warnings have appeared at intervals since the mid-1940s, and each of the VA’s 58 regional offices around the country has had to deal with the problem. During what the VA calls “active hoax periods” the Philadelphia center alone may get from 10,000 to 15,000 letters a week from vets hoping to cash in on the special insurance dividend. All they get in return is a postcard with the bad news. Here’s the complete text of the VA’s postcard, sent to me by Professor Thomas Foote at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, who submitted a claim in 1992 just to see what would happen:

The VA authorities really ought to correct their wording in the second paragraph of the debunking message. The phrase “the amount of months” should read “the number of months.” I wonder if I could get a dividend for pointing this out.

An experience that
happens to everyone at some time or other is mistaking a stranger for someone you know. For example, in my first couple of years teaching at the University of Idaho, there was a guy in another department who people seemed to think looked a lot like me. We even had some matching coats and ties in our wardrobes, plus similar short haircuts, so colleagues and students were constantly confusing us and starting conversations that made absolutely no sense, since we barely knew each other and our paths seldom crossed, even on that small, friendly campus. Friends kept telling me that I hadn’t seemed quite myself when they saw me at such-and-such a place last week, and then I’d realize that once again it was my double from Poly Sci or wherever whom they had met, since I certainly had not been where they thought they had seen me at the time.

A variation on this theme is failing to recognize someone whom you ought to know. Again, as a young instructor, I was mistaken a few times in my opening class sessions for a fellow student instead of as the teacher in charge. It was gratifying in a way, but still mutually embarrassing for the parties involved. A friend on another campus told me that he had this conversation once with a young student to whom he happened to speak on campus early in the fall semester. She: “Well, have you seen your advisor yet?” He: “I don’t have an advisor, I have advisees.” (Their paths parted at this point, and he was not sure that she got his meaning.)

Such experiences are bound to inspire
anecdotes,
that is, personal stories of typical true experiences. And anecdotes sometimes grow into
legends,
that is, longer versions of such stories that become stereotyped in style and then travel from place to place and person to person. A typical personal anecdote of mistaken identities might be about failing to recognize the guest of honor at some event and then sticking one’s foot in one’s mouth. I read one time about a young investment banker who chatted with a distinguished older gentleman before a guest lecture at his company, even offering the stranger some investment advice. The stranger turned out to be the Nobel Prize winner in economics who had been brought in to address the group. Another story I’ve heard is about a guy who forgot to bring any kind of writing instrument or notepad to the meeting with government officials for which he had been scheduled by his company. He asked a “secretary” to fetch him what he needed, which she quietly did; later it turned out that she
was
a secretary—the Secretary of the (whatever) department in the government, who had been waiting in the conference room to address the visitor. As such stories are told and retold, new details are added, background and local color is elaborated, and the stories take on a life of their own. The classic in this genre is probably the one about the person at a reception in London who realizes that the woman to whom he is speaking has a familiar face, but he just cannot place her. So he asks, “And what are you doing nowadays?” She replies, “Oh, I’m still being the Queen of England’s sister.”

There are not many urban legends based on mistaken identities, but those that do exist are among the most widely told and believed “true” stories of our time.

“The Elevator Incident”

T
his may be one of those apocryphal stories that acquire credibility through its many retellings. But the fact that it’s even circulating says something about the times.

The version that Joanne Stichman of West Los Angeles heard goes like this: Three women visiting Manhattan for the first time were invited to a bridge party in a high-rise building. With stories of muggings and rapes filling their heads, they were somewhat apprehensive about getting there safely.

The doorman admitted them and they entered the elevator, pushing the button for the 18th floor. But instead of going up, the elevator descended to the basement where, to their shock, a muscular, unsmiling man entered with a large dog.

The uneasy silence was suddenly broken when the man said, “Sit!” The women fell to the floor. He looked at them in amazement. “I meant the dog,” he said.

R
ecently, a 54-year-old local Japanese woman from Lana’i left the [Hawaiian] Islands for the very first time to join relatives on a vacation in Las Vegas. The bright lights and big city didn’t seem to faze her, but apparently she had some rather curious notions about Mainland blacks.

Boarding an unoccupied hotel elevator, on the way back to her room, she was startled to see the elevator doors suddenly reopen, allowing two black men on. The elevator stood motionless for a moment as she edged nervously toward the back. Finally, one of the men told the other to “Hit the floor,” then stood laughing hysterically as the Lana’i grandmother spread herself prone on the elevator floor. Obviously, she thought this was the end, just like on TV. When the two men finally stopped laughing, they apologized and helped her up off the floor.

The next day, when the Lanaian went to check out, she discovered her bill had already been paid. A large bouquet of flowers was left for her with a note: “Sorry, and thanks for the best laugh I’ve had in a long, long time.” It was signed: Lionel Richie.

A
terrified tourist mistook Eddie Murphy for a mugger in a posh hotel, collapsed in fear at his feet and begged him not to hurt her.

But the kind-hearted comic felt so sorry for the jittery German visitor that he even paid her hotel bill.

Gisela Klein, 48, was waiting for the elevator to take her to the ground floor of Manhattan’s luxurious Ritz Carlton where she was planning to meet her husband for dinner.

As she waited, Murphy and his bodyguards appeared from their rooms and stood next to her.

Klein was so nerve-wracked by New York’s fearsome reputation as a hotbed of crime that she was convinced the Hollywood superstar and his burly security men were muggers.

And when Eddie asked her what floor she wanted, the petrified German fell to her knees sobbing, and begged them to spare her.

Murphy says: “At first I thought this lady was making a joke, but she was terrified.”

Red-faced Gisela reveals: “After a few seconds I realized they weren’t going to rob me.

“They were laughing and thought I was joking.

“I was so ashamed. Eddie Murphy is one of my favorites, but I didn’t recognize him.”

But easy-going Eddie wasn’t fazed by the embarrassing mix-up.

When Gisela and her husband later checked out after their week-long stay, they found the highhearted comedian had paid their $3,500 hotel bill in full.

Eddie even left a note for her, saying: “Madam, our encounter was one of the nicest and funniest moments in my life. If only all women would fall at me [sic] feet like you did.

“But since you didn’t have as much fun as we had, I have paid your hotel bill for you.”

Perhaps most damaging to his reputation was what Murphy calls “The Elevator Story.” He explained: “There’s a story I was on an elevator with 10 bodyguards. An old lady was there. One bodyguard said, ‘Hit the floor,’ as in ‘press the button.’ The old lady got scared and dropped to the floor. And we were so embarrassed, and we helped her up, and I sent her flowers and paid her hotel bill, and
it never happened!
Here’s the clincher: Whenever I go, ‘No, it never happened.’ they always say, ‘Yes it did. My cousin was there.’”

“The Elevator Incident” is one of the most popular international urban legends of the 1980s and ’90s, told in innumerable “true” versions, and repeated by countless broadcasters and columnists. The first example lacks the black celebrity that soon became a fixed detail in the legend; it is from Steve Harvey’s “Around the Southland” column published on July 10, 1981, in the
Los Angeles Times.
Notice that already then Harvey alluded to “many retellings,” identified the story as “apocryphal,” and cited an oral source. In
The Choking Doberman
I traced Reggie Jackson versions of the legend that circulated in 1982 and 1983, eventually replaced by Lionel Richie versions, as in the second example quoted above from
Honolulu Magazine
for June 1989. The humor in most of these stories centers on the women—either foreign or from the boondocks—failing to recognize the celebrity. If a dog is present in the Richie versions, the singer may say “Sit Lady,” which echoes the title of one of his popular songs, “Lady.” In dogless versions of the story one of the black men may say “Hit fo’,” meaning “Hit the button for the fourth floor.” Other black celebrities named in American versions of the story include Wilt Chamberlain, “Mean Joe” Greene, Rosie Grier, Arsenio Hall, Lionel Hampton, Larry Holmes, Michael Jackson, “Magic” Johnson, Richard Pryor, Lou Rawls, O. J. Simpson, and Stevie Wonder (traveling with a Seeing Eye dog). Sometimes Harry Belafonte is mentioned in versions from abroad. But in recent years, Eddie Murphy has become far and away the most popular person to be mentioned in the story; the quoted example above is typical of reinvented and much-inflated tabloid versions; it was published in the
Star
for November 21, 1996. Murphy’s denial of the story is quoted from an interview in
Parade
published on June 9, 1996. A characteristic detail of the Murphy versions is sending the victim a dozen long-stemmed roses with a $100 bill wrapped around each stem. In a column by black journalist Joseph H. Brown in the
Tampa Tribune
for July 14, 1996, a Lionel Richie version of “The Elevator Incident” was quoted from a lecture given by a black professor from the University of Miami. Brown identified the story as an “urban folk tale” and commented, “I hope the good professor didn’t get his degrees with this kind of anecdotal research.” Brown also mentioned the
Parade
interview with Eddie Murphy and added to the list of celebrities named in the story Denzel Washington, Bill Cosby, and Mike Tyson. The background of “The Elevator Incident” legend is probed further in the next two items.

“It All Started with Neil (Or Did It?)”

I
have picked up another version of the story that has nothing to do with racial stereotyping, urban paranoia, or dogs.

The story is told to me by Keith D. Young, who told it three years ago at a meeting of the Adventurers’ Club. The setting is not an elevator but a corridor in the historic Houses of Parliament in London.

Young points out that the British are masters of pomp and ceremony. “Even innocent bystanders and spectators sometimes feel themselves involuntarily caught up in and reacting to the drama of the moment, though they may know little or nothing of the ritual itself….” The innate desire to do the right thing on solemn occasions, he suggests, may explain this story:

In Parliament, the equivalent of our Speaker of the House is called the Keeper of the Woolsack; at the time of the story this gentleman was Sir Quentin Hogg, Lord Hailsham. Parliament had just adjourned, and his lordship, resplendent in the gold and scarlet robes of his office, topped by a ceremonial wig, emerges from the great hall into the corridor on the way to his chambers. The corridor is crowded with an American tour group, beyond which Lord Hailsham sees an old friend, the Hon. Neil Matten, MP, with whom he would like a word.

“Neil!” his lordship shouts. “Neil!”

“There followed an embarrassed silence,” Young concludes, “as all the tourists obediently fell to their knees.”

Y
ou never know what might crop up in—or near—the courts of justice. Consider this item that Kincardine lawyer Norman Shepherd snared and sent to me:

The Lord High Chancellor of England, who sits in the House of Lords, presiding over not only that august body but the entire British legal system, is a formidable figure.

Formerly plain Quentin Hogg, now Lord Hailsham, he was wandering down a corridor in the House of Parliament when he spotted an old friend, Conservative MP Neil Marten, emerging from a doorway.

“Neil!” he boomed out.

Just then a party of American tourists stopped to give way as the full-wigged elaborately-gowned and obviously important apparition cruised past, trying to get Marten’s attention.

“Neil!” shouted Hailsham, even louder.

So the Americans duly obeyed, falling to their knees before the astonished, but amused, Lord Chancellor.

During our freshman year at Brown University in Providence, R.I., my friend Neil occasionally served as an altar boy at the Catholic Mass in the campus chapel. During one Mass he neglected to bring out all the things necessary for the consecration of the sacrament. Unnoticed, he slipped away to retrieve them, but was unable to return before the priest needed him.

The priest looked left and right, then out toward the congregation. “Neil?” he said with a frown. Immediately, the congregation dropped to their knees in prayer.