Urban legends alive and well

By John Mueller

I'll never forget it.

I was in the fourth grade, and I suddenly caught a serious case of Beatlemania. True, it was the late '80s by then, and I had missed the first serious wave of it by about 25 years. But no matter. I was surfin'. My parents one day brought home a CD player, a huge, monolithic, fascinating machine. One of my parents, I can't remember which one, picked up a copy of "Rubber Soul" to serve as the CD player's first blood. I was immediately transfixed by the sounds I was hearing from this album. I quickly learned everything I could about these lads from Liverpool, and became what I thought was the first Beatles aficionado in my fourth-grade class. I knew their songs, and I thought I knew everything about the members of the band.

But there's always somebody, it seems, who knows more.

And that person was a certain classmate of mine. I won't mention her name, but while I was gushing about the Beatles one day at recess, she coolly said to me: "You know that Paul is dead, right?"

A word about this girl. She definitely stuck out in that class in that she seemed to possess all sorts of strange, creepy knowledge. She knew all about the freakier side of life, it seemed, whether it was alligators living in the sewers of New York City, aliens drafting the Constitution, the alarming side effects of drinking Coke while eating Pop Rocks, and that chilling sitcom from the 1980s called "Small Wonder."

Anyway, I was shocked when she told me that Paul McCartney, who sounded so amazing when singing and playing bass on "I'm Looking Through You," was actually dead.

"No, he's not," I told her. "He's still alive."

"Nuh-uh," she said, delivering the ultimate smackdown line of fourth-grade terminology, looking at me with eerie eyes (that's another thing ... she never seemed to BLINK). "He died in 1966. Check out the album covers. It's so obvious."

And away she went. But she had planted the seed. Suddenly I was looking for all the clues I could get my hands on. Was it true?

After an exhaustive investigation, I can now say in 2008 that Paul McCartney is probably not dead. Still, I wondered for a while. Could he have really been replaced by a look-alike? Was it a vast conspiracy? And what was it that was so disturbing about the cover of "Abbey Road"?

The Paul Is Dead rumor might be one of the most well-known of the urban legends, a truly fascinating genre of modern culture that can pique anyone's interest.

As I got older, I was much more able to dismiss an urban legend as soon as I heard it. "Yeah, right," I'd think as soon as I heard of a new oddity. "Think I'm gonna believe that?"

So what's the problem, you ask?

Web sites. That's the problem. These days, thanks to our modern age, you are only seconds away from Googling something if you want to check out information on a weird thought that enters your head and stirs your curiosity. Which is how I discovered www.snopes.com. I swear, it was an accident. I just got curious one day about something or another. But I uncovered a whole slew of new urban legends that have popped up in recent months. I'll share a few of the more interesting ones.

Bill Gates giving away money? Supposedly, the Microsoft CEO is feeling generous and sending out e-mails inviting people to share in his fortune. All you have to do is forward that e-mail on to other people, and for every person that does the same, you will receive $250. What a guy! Just think — you can forward the e-mail on to someone else, collect the $250, and almost have enough dough to pay your monthly Comcast bill and get a tank of gasoline. Not quite enough, but almost.

A PIN in reverse will summon the police? If you're being forced at gunpoint to withdraw money from an ATM, there is a quick fix to the problem. Just enter in your PIN number backwards, and within seconds, a swarm of police officers will arrive (I think these officers must be alerted by a very modern version of what a co-worker of mine calls the Bat-Phone). Pretty nifty. But what if your PIN number is 999999?

Tom Brady in "The Brady Bunch"? This is almost believable. In that episode where an errant football thrown by Peter hits Marcia in the face, causing her to cancel a big date because her face swelled up, young Peter definitely has the look of the future New England Patriots quarterback. There's one problem: "The Brady Bunch" went off the air in 1974; Tom Brady wasn't born until 1977. Still, this urban legend is more exciting than Super Bowl XLII was.

Make-A-Wish Foundation bankrupted? Supposedly, an 8-year-old somehow tapped into a loophole that allowed him to make unlimited wishes to the charity organization. His outrageous trips included nine jaunts to Disneyland. Kid, we feel bad for you. But seriously. Disneyland? Nine times?

Dog wins Congressional Medal of Honor? If this is true, it's the feel-good story of the year. A military K9, part boxer and part British bull mastiff, and his handlers were reportedly taken hostage in Iraq. Things looked grim, but one of the dog's handlers gave him the secret signal to "go away but come back and find me." So the dog slipped away, then came back and attacked the guards at the door, then heaved his bulk against the door, breaking it. He went inside and somehow untied his handlers, and all escaped safely. Good dog! But I wonder ... does the Medal of Honor come slobber-resistant?
There you have it. Apparently, urban legends never run dry. And if they happen to intrigue you from time to time, you're just like me.

Now, seriously. Can anyone tell me why Paul McCartney is not wearing any shoes on the cover of "Abbey Road"?