Writer's Block: Folktales of the City

[uberreiniger]

[Error: unknown template qotd]My favorite was the one about the mean atheist professor who would spend all semester year after year teaching that God didn't exist. On the last day of class he would challenge anyone who believed in God to stand up and he would then drop a piece of chalk saying that if God existed He would stop the chalk from breaking when it hit the floor. No one ever had the courage to stand up until one day a young man finally did. Of course the professor mocks him and says he will now disprove God's existence by dropping the chalk, except the chalk bounces off his shoe and does not break. Mortified, the mean old professor runs out of the room in shame and the students leave with their faith in God restored. It's a heartwarming story, the kind of thing you'd like to believe is true. I recall reading on Snopes.com that it does have some basis in an actual occurence, but of course has become greatly exagerrated in the retelling.

One I actually fell for when I was very young and wasn't really aware of the concept of urban legends was that Jamie Lee Curtis was born a hermaphrodite. I was also duped into once signing a petition to stop Madeleine Murray O'Hare from persuading the government to severely curtail religious rights in America. I believe she was already missing when that rumor started circulating and I continued to see versions of the petition for years after her death. (Remember those weird days before the internet when you couldn't easily look up to see if a much-reviled minor celebrity was actually still alive and up to no good? Ah, how irrational and superstitious we were back in those days. Those days being the year 1995.)

Comments

[nightshade-7976.livejournal.com]

That is why Snopes is your friend. ;)

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

Entertaining and informative, just the way we like our truth to be :)

[watersaredeep.livejournal.com]

Madeline O'Hare's son is now in charge of their "ministry" and was one of my authors for years. His mom is dead; however, he and her legends live on. *sigh*

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

The last I ever heard, her surviving son was a Christian and remained opposed to his mother until the end of her life. Has he backpedalled now and taken up her work?

[watersaredeep.livejournal.com]

The last I ever heard, her surviving son was a Christian and remained opposed to his mother until the end of her life.

Absolutely what he did to the point of writing books and having an entire ministry based upon what his mom did was wrong, while at the same time the FBI investigating her disappearance and looking for her body. He is a conservative Christian and lives as such. I was seriously horrified when I had to speak to him each week. I'll be quiet now about them, otherwise I could be sued for defamation according to my last contracts with my former publisher. :/

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

I've nearly always been pretty cynical about urban legends, to the point of annoying people by telling them their favorites aren't true. Though I know I've been taken in by plenty of them just like anyone else. The only one I can remember off-hand is believing that if you saved the tabs from soda cans they could get someone free kidney dialysis. I didn't drink canned soda at the time but I believed it was true because my friend used to save hers up and give them to a girl at school whose brother was on dialysis. I wonder what she did with them, since they were actually worthless. Maybe she just didn't have the heart to tell my friend that. Or maybe she didn't even really have a brother on dialysis, after all these years who knows.

[celesma.livejournal.com]

I love urban legends. My favorites are anything to do with Disney, and the scary ones. One local legend around here, in fact, involves a red-haired hitchhiking ghost who randomly appears to drivers going down Route 44.

(Excuse me for randomly jumping in here — I've seen you around on christianity and always liked what you had to say. I also added you. :D)

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

Well thank you. It's nice to have you here.