To not point out story is an urban legend?

[StingLikeA]

I was in a group earlier of parents of DC's friends at a party. We were chatting away and one of them told an urban legend story (stealing a penguin from the zoo if that's relevant). I just went 'oh really ha ha' and moved the subject on as it felt really awkward.

Would you have politely pointed out that the story was a crock of shit to avoid them repeating it again? AIBU to have ignored it and presumably let them keep on telling it?

Has anyone else been told one of these face to face?

Ummmm but it’s true!! There couple of lads in Australia visiting from wales who did exactly this. The penguin was call Dirk. And the guys are known to our family, Rhys jones and Keri.

I worked with a guy who told me a funny story about his child at school saying something to the teacher. Few weeks later I read the exact story in an old copy of Reader's Digest in the Tearoom. Knew the guy was full of shit but this confirmed it.

That was a story on the children’s tv series Grange Hill many years ago. It was smuggled out in a duffle bag.

I once heard a story from a bloke I was chatting to in a pub.
It was a "Urgh, Americans are so stupid and self-centred" type story.
He said he got chatting to an American couple on Holiday in Morocco and they asked him if he wanted to come up on the roof and see the fireworks, he was like, what fireworks? And they said, it's 4th July. They were then apparently unable to comprehend that there wouldn't be fireworks on 4th in July in other countries. I had never heard it before and I believed him.
I repeated it in a comment on tiktok and about 100 different people preceded to tell me that this is a well known urban legend and I'm a big fat liar.
I was really embarrassed and felt very stupid.
So I do see how it can happen.

OMG!! someone I worked with who had pet snakes told me his vet told him that that's what his snake was doing!! Ten years I have believed this!!

The lying bastard!! 🤣

I’ve heard that one

I think sometimes for young children, dreams get mixed up with reality too. If they'd heard adults talking about something in their peripheral, they might then dream about it happening, which then gets mixed up with their actual memories and they believe it happened.

Marc Almond...hell of a thirst...

The micro chip one has apparently happened in every Chinese buffet in a 20 mile radius of here…

there was also the car seat at the side of the road thing, a girl I knew insisted she had a lucky escape from getting kidnapped

folk too busy ‘sharing just in case’ exactly how the red and blue thing went mental

There are a lot of sad people on the Internet like this who get all their news and taking points from the same sights etc.

They don't have much going on in their lives, probably have few friends and interesting stuff to take about l actually feel a bit sorry for them.

Most MN users exempted from these people of course.

😻

I

And Meconium!

Overheard the word said on the maternity ward, thought it sounded pretty and decided to use it off their new baby.

Like the registrar wouldn't have had a gentle word! 🤣

What is red vs blue schools?

God the semen ones are far reaching. I first heard it in my early teens and it was food poisoning after an indian lead to 7 different types of semen found in stomach. Around a decade later someone else started telling me the same story, this time the woman had died and they found 27 different types of jizzz during the post-mortem 🤨😅

Also, how may times have I heard about the young lad enjoying a distraction free wank with his headphones/airpods in and when he finishes he sees a fresh brew next to his bed that his mum must've left for him!

I know two people, who are neither prone to lying nor to flights of fancy, who both insist that they were on a school trip to Edinburgh Zoo where this happened. These people do not know each other. One was a teacher who said it happened in the 1980s, and the other a youth worker who said it happened in the 1990s. Trips would have come from different towns. Also both these people told me about this in the early 2000s, so before anything went 'viral' (and the teacher still isn't online much anyway). My gut tells me that they must be mistaken, but they both insist it happened. It's very odd.

Have just RTFT. Great thread, bringing up some old memories and some stories I've never heard before.

A couple I'm surprised haven't been mentioned:

• The police raiding Mick Jagger's house to find him eating a mars bar out of Marianne Faithful's vajayjay

• Swimming pool water having a chemical in it that makes it turn blue if you wee in the water. 100% believed this until Stephen Fry told everyone QI that it's an Urban Myth

I am a similar age and remember this so clearly. It is the sole reason I have never eaten a KFC in my entire life.

Ooh and the one with Neil Armstrong and the blow job

hahahah Im in my 40's and remember that one. I still thought it was true.lol

I've also just remembered "humans on average eat about five spiders after they crawl into their mouths when they're asleep"
Believed that one as a kid, especially since a friend in year 7 told me her mum had seen it happen to her.

But on reflection, no species is going to have survived that long if it's stupid enough to get itself eaten by something that's not even awake 🤣

Schools v schools (secondary) inviting people to fight pupils from other schools (so some schools were red and some blue and they were told to pit against each other) apparently scoring points depending on what damage they did. My dc school notified parents about it and there were some arsehole kids who tried to go through with it from various schools but they didn’t get very far and it has kind of died a death - so not really an urban myth

@AntiqueBabyLoanSmurf i think you’re thinking of the classic where a poster thought she’d found a penguin on the beach in the UK, then took it on the bus to the zoo. Something like that anyway. It wasn’t a penguin but a very puzzled sea bird!!

I’ll see if I can find it.

The family who are on a day out at the beach, find a dog swimming and take him in their to the vets. .. it's a giant rat.

almost happened, was a wolf. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47330924

FOUND IT @AntiqueBabyLoanSmurf!! From 2011 🙀

Was sat on the train and a woman got on with a penguin

Sat on the train and a woman comes racing up with a bundle under her arm. Sits down with this thing wrapped in a jumper which is sort of growling and hissing. The guard comes over for her money and she tells him she's got a penguin and she's taking it to the zoo which is at the next stop.
Guard looks a bit closer at the bird and points out that its a guillimot not a penguin. I'm now wetting myself with laughter. The woman asks the guard if the guillimot would have escaped from the zoo. The guard tells her its a wild bird and to go and put it back on the beach. She'd tied it's beak up and everything with a shoelace!!!!
I hope the poor bird is OK after been scooped up by a barmy OAP but it was so funny.

This actually happened at a zoo near me now closed down. A staff member stole two penguins and sold them for £10k.

What does that have to do with with post????