I love how urban legends sometimes (or oftentimes) believed to be true. In this day and age when information circulates so fast, we may not have the time to check the veracity of some stories. I ran across a post by asflutz on Strollerderby which highlights the top 10 urban legends regarding children. It is quite an amusing read, to say the least.
Here are some of my favorites – to be honest, I thought these to be true at one point. (Yeah, I can be very gullible.)
Pokemon episode gave Japanese kids seizures.
True, but only a “handful.” Although over 600 Japanese kids were reportedly rushed to the hospital with epileptic seizures induced from watching a particular 1997 Pokemon episode, only a few were actually diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy. But even if you’re one of those over-protective parents who think a few seizures from watching TV is a few seizures too many, Americans have nothing to worry about. According to Snopes, the offending scenes were removed from the episode, which anyway was never translated into English and will never air on American TV.
Fake “tattoos” and stamps for kids are laced with LSD.
False. Although parents today are just as afraid as our parents were about kids falling under the prey of drug dealers, this famous tale from the 1970s has yet to be supplanted by a more modern version.
Drug dealers smuggle cocaine into the U.S. stuffed into the bodies of dead babies.
False. This gruesome story has been around for more than 20 years, and has been reported as fact in respected publications such as The Washington Post and The New Republic, but there is no record of this ever having occurred. Versions keep popping up with each shift in the war on drugs, with dead children allegedly being used to smuggle narcotics into the Middle East or over the Mexican-American border.
Come on, don’t tell me you didn’t fall for at least one of these! Got any urban legends you want to share?
Originally posted on May 18, 2008 @ 10:18 am
