“The Licked Hand”
There was a girl who had a dog that would lie under her bed. Whenever she wanted to know if everything was okay, she would put her hand under the bed. If the dog licked her hand, that meant everything was all right.
One night the girl was home all alone, and she was in bed. She heard a noise like a dog panting. She put her hand under the bed and the dog licked it. Later that night she wanted to get something to eat. She went down to the kitchen. When she got to the kitchen she heard, “Drip, drip, drip.” She went over to the sink, but the tap wasn’t dripping. In the sink, though, there was a bloody knife.
After she saw the knife, she backed up and backed into the fridge. Again she heard, “Drip, drip, drip.” She opened the fridge door, and out swung her butchered dog. On the dog there was a note that said, “Humans can lick, too.”
From Simon J. Bronner, American Children’s Folklore (1988), pp. 150-51, as told by a fourteen-year-old girl in Logan, Utah, in 1984, who heard the story told at a slumber party. Indeed, often a slumber party is the scene in which the plot occurs as well; all the girls except the hostess of the party are killed, and the killer’s taunting message is found written in blood on the kitchen or bathroom wall. This handwriting-on-the-wall motif recurs in “AIDS Mary,” quoted in Chapter 5. Bronner quotes a second text in which “The Licked Hand” is combined with “The Baby-Sitter and the Man Upstairs,” quoted in Chapter 10.
A further shock occurs in a few versions in which the girl’s feet are licked rather than her hand. Sometimes the protagonist is a blind woman whose Seeing Eye dog licks her hand. A college variation of the story is “The Roommate’s Death,” given in Chapter 22.
“The Crushed Dog”
A young American scholar, fresh from his dissertation, won a prestigious fellowship to do postdoctoral research at an institute (art history, I think) in England. The institute was housed in a famous old castle in the countryside. He arrived at night and, awed by his surroundings, was taken to his room, which looked like something out of a movie about the Tudors.
He decided to get into bed and do some work there, but as he tried to fill his pen (this was some years ago), the ink bottle slipped from his hand. Reaching out to grab it, he splashed ink all over a priceless tapestry that hung over the bed. He was so mortified that he immediately dressed, repacked, and sneaking out of the castle, walked back to the train station, and went back home to America.
Twenty years later, the man, by then a famous scholar, was invited back to the institute. Though he still remembered with pain his earlier exit from that place, he figured that, the English being what they were, the episode would never be mentioned. He accepted.
When he arrived, he was shown into the director’s office and told that the director would be there to greet him in a moment. Tired from his travels, he put down his suitcases and pitched himself into an overstuffed chintz chair, whereupon he heard a little yelp.
He got up and found a small bit of dead fur. He had sat on the director’s little dog and killed it. He picked up his suitcases, snuck out of the castle, walked back to the train station, and went back home to America.
Sent to me in March 1996 by Joan Acocella of New York City, who heard it from a professor, who had heard it from another academic. Other versions of this popular tale of a sleeping dog lying down for good retain the hapless-outsider theme, but may include just one of the embarrassing episodes, or may describe the dog’s death first and the inkspill second. Southern California musicians have attributed the accident to a local bass player, a houseguest of a well-to-do jazz fan. Kingsley Amis elaborated on the ink spilling in a hilarious scene in his 1954 novel, Lucky Jim. The crushed-dog portion of the story appeared in Tom Robbins’s 1980 novel, Still Life with Woodpecker. Other published versions include S. J. Perelman’s early New Yorker story, “Don’t Blench! This Way to the Fantods,” reprinted in his 1975 book, Vinegar Puss; William Gaddis’s 1952 book, The Recognitions; and Terry Southern’s 1958 book, Flash and Filigree. The dog is variously described as a tiny terrier, a Pomeranian, or—as in 1984 in the Old Farmer’s Almanac—a Chihuahua. Stephen Pile in his 1979 The Incomplete Book of Failures attributed the story to England “in the late 1900s” [sic], but provided no documentation and titled the chapter in which it appears, “Stories We Failed to Pin Down.”
“The Dog in the High-Rise”
As told by Truman Capote to Lawrence Grobel
Dogs have figured in two personal incidents in your life and one macabre but humorous story, about a friend of yours you set up on a date with a woman who lived at the Dakota and had a Great Dane…
I didn’t set him up to meet her. This guy had a crush on this girl, a very well known model. He arranged to take her to dinner and the theater. When he arrived at her apartment in the Dakota the maid answered the door and said the young lady was getting dressed, would he go into the living room and make himself a drink. So he went into this big room that had French windows which were open. He saw this enormous Great Dane lying on the floor, playing with a ball. It was obvious that the dog wanted him to play with him. So he goes over, picks up the ball, and bounces it against this big plain white wall. The dog jumps up and grabs it, runs back and hands it to him. He throws it against the wall again and this goes on for about five minutes. Suddenly he throws the ball and it glanced against the wall and went out the window. The dog took one look and followed it right out the window! There was this horrible crash. At just this moment, the girl came into the room saying, “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, we’re going to be late for the theater.” He was just speechless with horror and didn’t know what to do or say. She kept saying, “Hurry, hurry, hurry—the elevators in this building are slow.” So they went to the theater and he didn’t say a word. She became more and more mystified. Here was this guy who was supposed to have a fabulous crush on her and he wouldn’t even speak to her. During the intermission she said, “I don’t understand what’s the matter with you, but you’re making me frightfully nervous and I’m going home.” Then she said, “I forgot to feed my dog. Did you see my dog?” “Yes,” he said, “I did. And I must say he looked awful hungry and despondent.” She walked out, went home, and the dog was in the courtyard. Along with John Lennon.
From Lawrence Grobel, Conversations with Capote (1985), pp. 68–70. Capote (1924–84) told this story repeatedly in interviews and lectures and on television talk shows, including the Tonight Show, with Johnny Carson. A particularly detailed version written by Capote appeared in Ladies’ Home Journal in January 1974. Carson himself repeated the story in his opening monologue in November 1985, and many other people—some celebrities, some not—have retold the story, both with and without crediting it to Capote. The story also inspired a “lite” beer TV commercial and an episode of The Jeffersons in the 1980s. Whether “The Dog in the High-Rise” was original with Truman Capote is impossible to determine, but it should be noted that the Australian-born novelist Sumner Locke Elliott was reported telling it as a personal experience as early as 1974, and another version titled “Fetch!” appeared in Boys’ Life in January 1975, later reprinted in a reader for middle school classes.
“Fifi Spills the Paint,” aka “Kitty Takes the Rap”
I recently heard about a friend of a friend—a FOAF—who is an interior decorator with a thriving business on Chicago’s wealthy North Shore. He had just finished painting an elegant home in Wilmette, and was going around with a can of touch-up paint, making sure everything was perfect.
He finished the last brush stroke, stepped back to admire his work, and kicked the paint can over onto the priceless Oriental rug. What to do?
At that moment the client’s yappy, snappy, obnoxious toy poodle, Fifi, trotted into the room. Thinking quickly, the decorator scooped her up and dropped her into the puddle of paint, at the same time exclaiming loudly, “Fifi! Bad Dog! What have you done?”
I was attending a seminar in Trial Advocacy, sponsored by the Association of Trial Lawyers of Ameri
ca, held on Nov. 11–16, 1989, in Washington, D.C. One of the featured speakers was a famous Texas trial lawyer, Jack Zimmermann.
Mr. Zimmermann has a wonderful Texas twang, and he gave his speech with a great deal of colorful language. He was speaking on the rules of evidence, and their use in trials. He was critical of the tendency of prosecutors to rely on circumstantial evidence. Then he told a story, which he said was from his boyhood. He said that he and his brother—aged about 8 and 10—had been left in charge of the house while their mother went out to run an errand. She had left a Dutch apple pie cooling on the kitchen table.
The boys were specifically told to keep an eye on the pie, and to make sure that no one touched it or ate any of it. But the pie smelled wonderful, and eventually the aroma became irresistible. Jack reasoned that if he and his brother only took a little bit from the corners of the pie, and then smoothed it over, their mother would never know the difference.
Unfortunately, the boys were unable to stick to their plan, and they ended up eating almost half of the pie. They knew that they could never hide or disguise what they had done. And, just then, Jack heard his mother’s car pull into the garage.
Suddenly Jack got an idea. He grabbed the family cat, and he shoved its face into the pie. The cat’s face became covered with bits and pieces of the pie filling and the crumb crust.
Jack’s mother walked into the kitchen and saw the cat looking up at her, and she didn’t hesitate for a moment. She grabbed the cat, and threw him out the back door into a stream right behind the house (which everyone called “the river”).
At this point, Mr. Zimmermann ended his story, saying, “Now that wasn’t the last cat to be sent up the river on crummy circumstantial evidence!”
“Fifi” was sent to me in 1986 by Susan Levin Kraykowski of Crystal Lake, Illinois. After I published her story in a newspaper column and in Curses! Broiled Again!, several professional painters wrote to inform me that this is a traditional ploy well known among painters as a way to shift blame for spillages. The variation, “Kitty Takes the Rap,” was sent by Jim Goodluck of Cleveland, Ohio; I paraphrased it in The Baby Train and also mentioned a letter that Jack B. Zimmermann of Houston sent me in 1990 in response to my query. Zimmermann wrote, “For criminal defense attorneys, this story is the perfect explanation of how seductive, yet how weak, circumstantial evidence can be.” But, he continued, “I confess I learned the story from another trial lawyer—one of Colorado’s greatest courtroom attorneys, Len Chesler of Denver.” Another version of the story involving two young girls and some spilled berry cobbler appears in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, published in 1972.
“Take the Puppy and Run”
So this elderly lady constituent unfolded this complaint to State Sen. Roy Goodman:
Seems she had a Great Dane. She cherished this Great Dane. When he died, this distressed lady knew not how to get rid of her beloved pet, so she rang the ASPCA. Budget cuts prevented them from collecting him, they said. Bring him over and they’ll organize a proper burial, they said. Right, but how, she said. In a suitcase, they said.
She was little and frail. The suitcase was large and heavy. Observing her struggling along the street a stranger offered to carry this cumbersome load. The panting lady stopped, thanked the stranger, and turned the handle over to him. The instant he grasped it, this happy thief ran like hell.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.
Oh Well, in That Case
A friend of mine agreed to look after a couple’s aged dog while they went on a two-week vacation. Murphy’s Law—the dog died. My friend didn’t know what to do with it, as the couple wouldn’t return for another week, and a stiff German shepherd was hardly the conversation piece she’d always dreamed of.
She called the ASPCA who told her they could dispose of the body if she could get it to their center. Problem number two: What cab driver in New York is going to let someone take a huge dog in his cab, let alone a dead one? She decided to stuff the dog into a steamer trunk and take it on the subway.
Anyone who has tried to get the dead weight of a German shepherd down subway steps quickly realizes that it’s not easy. Seeing her struggle, a young man offered to help her. This is unusual in New York, but she thought it very kind—right up to the time the subway doors closed, with her on the inside and him on the platform, laughing and carting the trunk away.
I would have given anything to see the expression on his face when he opened the trunk to admire his loot.
Janet M. Nordon
Version one is from Cindy Adams’s column in the New York Post for January 27, 1987; version two from the “Only in New York” feature edited by John Sullivan in the New York Daily News Magazine for February 21, 1988. The latter was repeated as proof that “crime still doesn’t pay” in New York City on the San Diego Union’s editorial page, no less, for March 4, 1988. Makes you proud of American journalism. Both versions display features of the breathless style and jazzy format of typical gossip columns. Several readers forwarded me these examples, saying they had heard variations of the same story told in a more conversational style, but—true to these columnists’ claims—my correspondents heard the story “only in New York.” This tale is an obvious localization of the venerable “Dead Cat in the Package” legend quoted in Chapter 3.
3
Just Deserts
The late great San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, who loved urban legends, wrote in 1971 with reference to them, “old-time newsmen claim there’s no such thing as fables—‘If enough people believe them, they’re true’—and maybe that’s right. I believed a lot of them once. I’m even ready for some more.”
Many urban legends do indeed resemble fables. Like the ancient stories attributed to Aesop, they are short, snappy stories, usually with just a single episode, cast with stereotyped characters, and concluding with a moral that’s either stated directly or implied.
The “truth” factor in fables and legends is not dependent on matching the incidents in the stories to a real-life origin. Instead, fables contain the truth of some universal meaning or moral.
Ancient fables might lead up to a moral like “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” or “Slow and steady wins the race.” Modern urban legends lead up to morals like “Always check the back seat of your car,” or “If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not true.” Somewhere between ancient and folk fables might be placed the usually comic stories with morals written by authors like James Thurber, two of whose original fables conclude “Don’t count your boobies before they hatch” (from “The Unicorn in the Garden”) and “A new broom may sweep clean, but never trust an old saw” (from his version of “The Tortoise and the Hare”). But, unsurprisingly, the fables of Thurber and other authors never passed into the oral tradition nor developed folkloric variations.
A good example of a modern oral story akin to an ancient fable was sent to me in 1991 by Jim Hutton of the San Antonio Express-News. He had heard it from his father, who had heard it in a conversation about greyhound racing in Texas:
At a greyhound race track somewhere in the United States, one of the dogs got fed up with endlessly chasing the mechanical rabbit around the track but never catching it. So the dog somehow figured out a better way to go.
One day when the starting gates opened, all the other greyhounds sprinted away, but this clever dog just turned and waited for the rabbit to come around the track. Unfortunately, when the waiting greyhound met the speeding metal rabbit head on, there wasn’t much left of the dog.
I’ll supply a moral for this sad story: Sometimes it’s better to run with the pack than to follow your own path.
Or take this fable-like story that circulated by word of mouth and in the media during the time of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska:
During the cleanup, environmentalists spent a great deal of time, effort, and money to rescue and rehabilitate the oil-coated birds and animals. In order to commemorate their h
eroic efforts, a group of environmentalists arranged to publicly release a seal that they had lovingly cleaned up and restored to health.
The press and a large crowd of spectators gathered to observe the heartwarming release, and as the crowd applauded wildly, the seal swam happily out into the bay—where it was immediately eaten by a killer whale.
Moral: You never lose your place in the food chain.
A third example of a modern animal fable comes from syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry, who published it just before Christmas in 1991. Many readers who sent me clippings of the column recalled that they had also heard the story told, so it may be an authentic legend, or the story may have become one after Barry publicized it.
Barry, of course, said he was not making up “The Story of the Christmas Goat.”
The goat was the pet of a family in Virginia, and one bitterly cold Christmas Eve they found their goat dead—frozen solid in a standing position. The family couldn’t dig up the ground to bury their pet, nor could they find any agency during the holiday that would take the goat’s body off their hands.
(If this problem of pet-corpse disposal seems familiar, it’s because you just read “Take the Puppy and Run” in Chapter 2.)
As the family was driving around with the frozen goat awkwardly loaded into their station wagon, they passed a Nativity scene set up in front of a church, and they immediately saw the solution to their problem.
Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends Page 6
