DEAR PROFESSOR
Here's a story I heard just the other night. It appears to have three basic elements of an urban legend: a FOAF (friend of a friend), an automobile and a shopping mall. But the person who told it said it really happened to a friend's aunt.It seems a woman came out of a shopping mall to find two men drinking beer and eating in her car. She pulled out a revolver she kept in her purse and ordered them out of the car.
The men jumped out and ran away in great panic; then the woman got in the car only to discover that her ignition key did not fit.
Then she noticed her own car, identical to theirs, parked one row over in the parking lot.
Have you heard this one? - ERWIN WILLIAMSON, OXFORD, MISS.
Indeed I have, Erwin. "Whose Car is Whose?" is a story that's been going around lately without a shred of verification, at least none that I'm aware of. Actually it has at least two further traits that identify it as a bona fide urban legend: varying details and adaptation of the plot to different times and places.
I heard the same story last Christmas, the season when shopping-mall parking lots get the most crowded. According to the storytellers, from one man to as many as four were sitting in the car.
After the woman scared the men off with her handgun, she spotted her own car parked directly beside the look-alike car, or a few spaces down the same row, or one row or more away.
"Whose Car Is Whose?" has been repeated a lot lately on computer bulletin boards and newsgroups, with most people who post it to the electronic grapevine claiming that it's a true report of a local incident, according to a friend who has a friend, who knows someone, etc.
Another recent car story with a similar theme that has been circulated widely via computers is "Kick the Car." I got a version from computer user Hank Graham of Seattle, who forwarded it to me after reading it as it was posted by a user in Athens, Ohio.
In this story, a young man was coming out of a grocery store carrying his purchases, which included a six pack of beer, in a brown paper bag.
As the man walked between two cars, the shopping bag bumped against one of them, whereupon the driver, a burly character sitting there with his girlfriend, jumped out and accused the man of scratching his new car.
The beer-guy put up with all the abuse he could stand from the noisy boyfriend, figuring he was talking mainly to impress his girlfriend. But finally the beer-guy had heard enough.
"If it will make you feel better," he said to the boyfriend, "why don't you just go over there and kick some dents into the door of my truck?"
So the burly boyfriend went over to the truck that had been pointed out to him and started kicking its door as hard as he could.
Just then another guy walked out of the store and ran over to the truck yelling, "What are you doing to my truck?"
The boyfriend said, "Your truck? But that guy over there told me that this was HIS truck, and I'm just getting him back for scratching my car."
At this point, the two men turned around in time to see the beer-guy driving off in his own car."Curses! Broiled Again," Jan Harold Brunvand's fourth collection of urban legends, is now available in paperback from Norton. Send your questions and urban legends to him in care of the Deseret News.
1992 United Feature Syndicate Inc.