It's true! It's true!

“Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on

Robert Duvall as "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird

raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained - if you ate animal raw,you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

As kids, we all heard and contributed to a hundred myths about “that neighbor” or “the ole’ lady down the block” or “the cheerleader from the rival school.” I remember talk that a school custodian had at some point served jail time . . . or at least, should have.

Whence cometh the urban legend? The hook recovered from the door handle or the restaurant employee who hunts pets? Those city sewers are full of alligators; cats suck the life out of infants; Mikey from the Life commercials died of an overdose of Pop Rocks. Where do we get these things?

Oh, and don’t forget – never flash your lights at an unlit car at night – it’s a gang ritual . . . and Bill Gates will send you thousands of dollars if you forward a certain email.

Why do we invest such energy in these tales? Do we have some inner need to believe the odd and occult? Is there an innate gullibility (see the Nigerian who needs you to hold $20 million for him) that makes us – at the best – a sucker for a good story? Or is there an awful naiveté that will send dollar after dollar or share private information to strangers?

And don’t get me started on certainties fed by “what I read on the Internet.”

I’m the biggest fan of sitting around the campfire telling scary stories or getting lost in a Stephen King novel (though, so far, I’ve a quibble or two with 11/22/63). I am easily amused when I discover that I’ve bit on a tall tale. I am, however, saddened when myths become part of our national Zeitgeist . . . when our political leaders disregard facts and truth in favor of reelection advantage or to usurp the status quo . . . and when we are so intellectually lazy that we depend on comedians for our news and commentary.

I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who is truly dumb. I’ve met people who choose not to know, or who, too willingly, accept spoon feeding (from both left and right hands) or simply are so self-absorbed that they don’t realize that others have needs, news, or notions.

Folks, it’s a guarantee that over the next 10 months, we’ll be fed line after line and myth after myth . . . I, for one, plan to be skeptical even of trusted sources or comfortable opinions. I invite my friends to do the same . . . let’s leave the urban legend (and the spin!) by the campfire.