I'm An Urban Legend

😜 You know what an urban legend is, don't you? One of those stories that people pass along, thinking that they're true, but aren't really. Things like alligators in the sewers of New York. Well, guess what. They're all true. And they're all about me. I'm not only an urban legend. I'm THE urban legend.

"Call the men in the white coats!" you might yell. "Paul's got delusions again!"

Maybe.

Maybe I'm just imagining this scar where my kidney was stolen while I was at a wild party in a Providence hotel room. Maybe my mom didn't really bring home an ugly little dog that turned out to be a Mexican sewer rat.

Legends start from somewhere. Real events are fictionalized in their retelling. If you can believe that they were real, then why can't you believe that they had the same origin?

Maybe it's all true...

It started a long time ago, back when I was a kid. Just a little kid. I read a comic book and thought that anyone with a cape could really fly. So I tied a towel around my neck, then my cape and I jumped out the fifth story of the apartment building. I flew. Straight down.

Yes, I survived, or I couldn't have written this, could I? That proves something, doesn't it?

So you see, I'm the beginning of the urban legend about the kid who believed Superman comic books. I'm the reason your mother didn't want you to read Archie and Casper the Friendly Ghost. Alas, those were different days. With moms afraid that we would become masked vigilantes or at least end up with broken necks, moms nowadays are afraid that Pepa Pig will lead kids to splash in mud puddles.

But that was only the beginning of my career as the originator of urban legends.

My pet baby alligator, "Twiggy", went for a swim in the toilet at my older brother's insistence. Twiggy is the alligator in the sewers that you heard about in the urban legend.

How do I know? I'm also the kid who went down into the storm drain to find a baseball and spent two weeks roaming the sewers. I'd never have made it if it wasn't for my loyal alligator, Twiggy, who brought me food and warm blankets.

In high school, I was the kid who maxed out the SAT test just by guessing A,B,C,D,A,B,C,D. That set me up for college where I invented goldfish swallowing. Okay, maybe I didn't invent goldfish swallowing, but since goldfish swallowing was an established historical incident, it doesn't count as an urban legend.

But I did get that nice cherry-red Ferrari for just $10 from a disgruntled ex-wife in Cranston. That scratch on the side didn't come from the angry ex-husband, but from the escaped lunatic they called the "hookman".

You heard about the Prom Ghost? It was in that car where she left her faded, sopping wet corsage after I picked her up hitchhiking near Scituate Reservoir.

It was even my cat who dragged home the filthy dead rabbit which I shampooed and dried with a hair dryer and slipped it back into the neighbor's rabbit hutch in the dead of night. Yep, I'm the one who caused the poor woman to die of a heart attack when she found an apparent vampire rabbit, returned from its backyard grave.

So now you know. They're all true.

Even the black helicopters. I helped paint them one summer when I was in college.

The $2 million Rembrandt painting at the garage sale? It's hanging over my fireplace. The $100 Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe? We make those cookies for Christmas every year.

But there's one urban legend that's not me. So it might not be true. No matter how upset I was about that rabbit incident, I was not the one who decided to dry his cat in the microwave.

Did I make you laugh? Want more? Here are a few more of my humor columns on Vocal

Fortune Favors the Bold

Why Clickbait is Wonderful

Language Confusion

Waddling to Work

What, Me Volunteer?

I'm an Urban Legend

Life Under the Glide Path

I Miss My Hair

I'm a Kennedy Cousin

Super-Secret Diet Secrets

My Dogs Love me. Honest!

Yucky Foods!

Trapped in K-Mart

Geminis are Skeptics

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