Urban Legends

People receive emails about urban legends almost everyday; and don’t know what it really is, or if they do know what is they don’t know if it’s true or not. But an urban legend is a story that appears mysteriously and spread spontaneously in various forms and is usually false; contains elements of humor and is popularly believed to be true. An urban legend doesn’t really have an origin but it’s just a story passed on from friend to friend, and even generation to generation.
The first urban legend that interested me was: “A video shows a driver being thrown from his car in a collision and run over by oncoming traffic”. Comes to find out that this urban legend is true, Damien Harrington had died on the scene. In April 2002 it all starts when Damien Harrington was at liquor store in Alpharetta, Georgia trying to purchase some beer with a bad check. Then left the store, the store manager ended up chasing him while calling the police. Since he was drunk he bumped up against the car that was in front of him and swerve, the SUV tipped over and he flew to the other side, and got ran over by the oncoming traffic.
The second urban legend: “The term ‘420’ entered drug parlance as a term signifying the time to light up a joint. This urban legend is true, because high school students started using this old term in 1971, when they meet up at 4:20 to smoke marijuana to release stress about anything. After a number of times of doing this people around the word made April 20th (4th month 20th day) the day was smokers just smoke marijuana, as a national smoke day. There are many rumors about how 420 came about like; “420 is the penal code section for marijuana use in California. According to snopes.com section 420 of California penal code refers to obstructing entry on public land. There are many more rumors about 420 but it’s just a term use back in the day.
The final urban legend is; “Parking lot carjackers are placing flyers on the rear windows of automobiles, then taking the car as the driver step out and get the flyer. This urban legend seems to be false. People have received this message from time to time since February 2004, and we still haven’t heard of any carjacking reports that are done by this procedure on the news. Even though there is still people who carjacks like; people who need money, kids who want to be in a gang, and they wait in spots where the driver haves to get out by themselves. Isn’t any carjacker that has used this method yet.
I just gave you three examples of urban legends; some are true, some are false, and some are undetermined. There are so many urban legends about anything that you can think of. So if you receive an e-mail about a situation about somebody or something its more then likely a urban legend.