The Stuff of Legends

A small item in the paper the other day told of a woman who became so flustered on seeing Robert Redford in a Santa Fe ice-cream parlor that she put her ice-cream cone into her purse. This story struck us as a bit fishy (if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor), so we weren’t surprised when, the next day, Redford denied it. What had aroused our suspicions in the first place was the fact that we had heard that story before--involving a different celebrity.

But we’re now concerned that this yarn is on its way to becoming an “urban legend”--one of those twice-, thrice-, many-told tales that are just plausible enough to assume a life of their own even though they are not true.

The archetypical urban legend is the one about alligators in the sewers of many large cities, having ended up there by being flushed down toilets after being bought as tiny pets. Then there is the one about the poodle that exploded after being put into a microwave oven to dry off after a bath. And the one about the circus elephant that escaped and sat on a car. And the one about the housewife caught in the nude at a laundromat. And the one about the rat that got deep-fried with the chicken at a fast-food restaurant.

Jan Harold Brunvand of the University of Utah has filled two books with urban legends--”The Vanishing Hitchhiker” and “The Choking Doberman,” both published by W. W. Norton--and is gathering material for a third. He says that these stories are characterized by being more than a bit bizarre and too good to be true. Not infrequently they appear in newspapers. Alas, the ice-cream-cone-in-the-purse story sounds tailor-made for his collection.