"Urban legends" are oral stories told as if true but usually involving a "friend of a friend," and dealing with realistic elements and incidents but often with some bizarre if not grotesque twist. Jan Harold Brunvand has written a series of entertaining books on urban legends, starting with The Vanishing Hitchhiker (WW Norton, 1981 but still available in paperback). These are stories which pop up all over the country many of which sound very familiar to many of us: the unlucky poodle put in the microwave to dry; the babysister on LSD who cooks the baby thinking it's a turkey; the "Hook-Man" and the teenagers out parking.
There are also "legends" told and re-told in medical schools and hospitals across the country. These, too, are repeated as if they actually occurred, usually some years prior to the telling and involving some well-known colorful chairman of a department.
For example, when I was a Duke (medical school) and the Medical College of Richmond (residency) I heard the following told as if it truly happened at each medical center some years before I arrived. A medical student, fresh to the wards, was told to scrub up for a gallbladder case with the infamously severe chief of surgery. During the case, the student to told to take notice of the "robin's egg" blue of the gallbag and as he peers over into the field, his glasses (lubricated by ample nervous sweat) falls into the gaping wound...the following silence is broken by the chairman's gruff voice: "Why don't you just get up on the table and take a dump in there?"
I want to collect more of these and provide my own illustrations to the more "visual" examples so please email with any story or ancedote that you think may apply.
PLEASE Email me at beetlebrox@aol.com with your ideas.