I happened to be online (everyone’s shocked–Emm, you’re never online…,) when my daughter called to chat from college. After covering the boy-related issues, she said, “Oh, I have to tell you a really scary story that actually happened to my friend’s friend when she was babysitting!”
She went on to relate this true tale of the babysitter and a freaky clown statue.
My inner skeptic said, “Urban legend.”
She said, “no, this really happened!”
My inner skeptic did a quick google and read the Snopes.com entry back to her.
Funny to be 18 and naive.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/statue.asp
I love Urban Legends and SNOPES is wonderful. However, you don’t have to be young to fall for these…my 68 year old mother frequently emails or calls with Urban Legend related worries.
Eric
“…a Ronald McDonald clown statue toppled onto a six-year-old girl, severing the fleshy part of her fingertip. The excised piece was reattached, but the child still had a malformed fingernail.”
I feel validated now. Ronald McDonald has always terrified me.
I agree. My parents are ALWAYS sending me the emails. The best one thus far is the one about how you’ll blow up if you use your cell phone whilst pumping gas 
Oh, and that clown on the snopes site is WAAAAAAAY scary!!! Gives me the heebies.
Funny, first thing I thought of when I saw the subject of this thread was “Oh, it’ll be about John Wayne Gacy - funny thing to talk about on C&F” - just goes to show that ya shouldn’t jump to conclusions 
Although the snopes page did mention him
I was at a gas station Saturday that had that warning plastered all over its pumps!!! 'Course this was up in sticksville Northern California, even farther North than I am.
All the gas pumps I’ve seen in NC have the warning against using cell phones while
pumping gas. Since scientific studies have come down on the side of saying it’s not
a problem, I don’t worry about it. But since I have seen people smoking while pumping,
I figure the gas stations are just in a position of covering their collective posteriors.
What you DO have to watch out for is getting in and out of your car while pumping
gas, and not grounding yourself before touching the pump handle.
Static electricity + gas fumes = bad.
Oh, good. A chance to repeat another in my endless stock of personal anecdotes.
I was stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC during the mid-70s gasoline crisis. I don’t recall which year this happened–probably '74, but it was in winter, when the air was very dry.
I was in 1st PSYOP Bn, so I pulled Sergeant of the Guard for the JFK Center (Special Forces). We had walking sentinels in a few select locations, but mostly we had pairs of "roving " sentinels in jeeps, who drove around and checked a variety of buildings that belonged to the Center.
One evening when I was on, we got a radio call from one of our roving sentinels who was all excited. They were just going on shift and had driven down to some of our buildings in a relatively isolated area off of Gruber Road, where they found the area crawling with MPs.
It turned out that some clever fellow had driven his big Army tractor-trailer (don’t recall the nomencalture, but probably big enough to haul a tank or two) down out of sight of any traffic and proceeded to siphon gasoline into a can for his personal use.
What he didn’t realize was that gas moving through a plastic hose in a low-humidity environment can build up a nice charge of static electricity. He didn’t have all his parts grounded properly, got a big spark, and blew himself up. Apparently, he was killed and the truck pretty much destroyed. I drove down there a couple of days later, and there was no sign that anything had ever happened there. Our unit got a special lecture on the incident from our company commander later in the week.
Uh…this article (http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/cell_fires.html) cites police reports in two instances blaming a ringing cell phone for starting fires.
It also mentions the “Mythbusters” episode in which the guys were unable to get the cell phone to ignite any vapors. Maybe they had one of the “safe” ones. 
M
Hey, if you see Zoolander, you’ll never pump gas and smoke.
My favorite urban legend is where the Hollywood film company needs a giraffe transported over the freeway in an open trailer to a location. When the giraffe arrives, it has no head as it was sheared off at a low overcrossing. When the driver was confronted, he replied, “Hey, I thought he’d duck.”
Tony
I am still skeptical. It’s very hard to nail down the culpret when something like this happens.
It’s entirely possible that the person who was answering his phone had recently gotten out
of his car, causing a static buildup, or the motion of his arm bringin the phone to his ear
caused static discharge. It’s just hard to tell what caused a discrete static event, but if it
was the cell phone, then it was grossly malfunctioning. Cell phones do not have
spark gaps by design, and are shielded against electromagnetic interference, and therefore,
inductive current is probably not going to happen. I think the cops jumped to conclusions…
The best place to disprove this would probably be New Jersey, where there are always pump
attendants (you can’t pump your own gas in NJ – really good unions there). Every
attendant I ever saw there was on a cell phone the whole time he was pumping my gas.
If they never have a static event, that would convince me…
Anyway, just to be safe, I ground myself by touching the roof of my car whenever I go to
touch the pump handle.
NO! I don’t believe it. THAT would NEVER happen!!! 
OK, here is the obigatory “sarcasm alert” warning.
are we supposed to make this alert whenever we are being sarcastic? I’ll have to put it on just about every post… 
I’ve lived in New Jersey my whole life. My mom, born in NY, didn’t learn to drive until she was older and living in Jersey. Neither one of us learned to pump gas. Which makes it diffucult(or mlldly annoying) to visit relatives in NY, as all the gas stations are self serve, except for one lonely Rotary station on the highway. Are there any other states besides NJ that are full serve mandated?
Sometimes going to another state is like going to another country. You can buy beer anywhere. in NY. My uncle couldn’t understand how one could not buy beer in the grocery store in this state. I found it odd that beer and wine was so available in NY State.
Here in Ohio, we can buy harder stuff at the grocery store too (albeit diluted). To get the regular non-diluted harder stuff, you can go to the Convenient Store up the street. That’s where the “state approved” liquor store resides, it seems.
In NY you can buy beer, gasoline, cigarettes and cell phones all at one place.
You could put it in your signature, or in your avatar.
(just trying to be helpful here)
My Black Lab must have heard that story. When she’s riding in the car, she’ll intently watch overpasses as we approach, and then duck as the car goes under them.
After doing that for a few passes, she’ll lay down in the back seat.
Oregon is full serve mandated.
I just moved to southern-tier NY after 6 years in NJ. First thing that caught me off guard was how all the coffeeshops here have a rack of beers on tap.
I’m from IL, where you can buy beer in a grocery store, so I don’t find that to be unusual. Although, tho after 6 years in New Jersey, seeing beer in a grocery store is a bit like seeing a penguin in a grocery store.
Nevertheless, beer on tap even in a coffeehouse is strange. Illinois doesn’t hand out liquor licenses that liberally, I suppose. Either that, or it never occurs to people in IL that beer even fits in that picture. I can just imagine the conversation at my hometown bean hut:
“Oooh, you have the pumpkin spice beans!”
“Yes! They’re a big hit. Goes well with our homemade cinnamon rolls.”
“Looks like you’re all decked out for the fall.”
“Yep, those jack-o-lanterns are courtesy of Mrs. Everson’s 4th grade class at Long Beach.”
“Did they make those little scarecrows too?”
“Yes.”
“They’re so cute!”
“I know!”
“Anyway, I’ll have a Labatt Blue.”
Caj