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What a Way to Dye!
Claim: Children are spirited away from amusement parks and shopping centers by kidnappers who alter the appearance of their victims before smuggling them out the exits.
CHILD ALERT: Please take the time and forward this to any friend who has children! Thanks! Wanted to share something that happened today while shopping at Sam's club. A mother was leaning over looking for meat and turned around to find her 4 yr. old daughter was missing, I was standing there right beside her, well she was calling her daughter and no luck. I asked a man who worked at Sam's to announce it over the loud speaker for Katie. Well, he did, and let me say he walked past me when I asked and went to a pole where there was a phone right there to make his announcement for all doors, and gates to be locked a code something...so they locked all the doors at once. This took all of 3 min after I asked the guy to do this. They found the little girl 5 min later crunched in a bathroom stall, her head was half shaved, and she was dressed in her underwear with a bag of clothes, a razor, and wig sitting on the floor besides her. Whoever this person was, took the little girl, brought her into the bathroom, shaved half her head, undressed her in a matter of less than 10 min. Makes me shake to no end. Please keep an eye out for your kids when in shopping places. It only took a few minutes to do all of this, another 5 min and she would have been out the door...I am still in shock some sick person could do this, let alone in a matter of minutes...The little girl is fine... thank God for fast workers who didn't take any chances. Thanks for reading. Please keep praying for our children. Especially now that school is about to start. Just reading this was enough for me. I'm making a pledge to keep watch for all kids, young and old! We know those little kids slip by us so fast when we are in a store. Especially when they see toys or candy. Everything can be replaced but a life. No parent would want to lose a child in no way form or fashion!
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What It Takes...?
Here's a specimen that's always in circulation by fax and email, not to mention appearing on several dozen Websites at any given time. It falls into the "legendary but true" category (see below).
This is an actual essay written by a college applicant to NYU in response to this question:
3A. IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:
ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?
I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently.
Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.
I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat 400.
My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations with the CIA.
I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid.
On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prize-winning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin.
I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college.
(The author was accepted and is now attending NYU.)
Comments: It's more or less true! This essay (or a version of it), written by a high school student named Hugh Gallagher in 1990, was originally published in Literary Calvalcade, a magazine of contemporary student writing, and later reprinted in both Harper's and The Guardian in Britan. There's some dispute over whether or not the essay actually won Gallagher admission to NYU, but he did, in fact, graduate from that school in 1994, has been a freelance writer and is now (unsurprisingly) a novelist.
Gallagher's first book, Teeth, was published by Pocket Books in March 1998.
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