What the experts on embarrassment itself have explained, as Edward Gross and Gregory P. Stone did in a 1964 article published in the American Journal of Sociology, is that embarrassing situations and stories typically serve to undermine a person’s identity, poise, and confidence. “Exposure,” asserted Gross in a published interview, “is the key thing…. When you’re embarrassed, you’ve committed some kind of public gaffe.” The following story, unverifiable, but convincing nonetheless, offers a good example:
A homeless person tried to get on a bus without sufficient fare, and he was kicked off by the driver. Going around to the back of the bus, the vagrant managed to slip in after someone had gotten off, and he hid behind a rear seat.
A few stops along the bus line a woman got on the bus and made her way back to an available seat in the rear of the bus. Looking over the seat back, she noticed the stowaway crouched there, and said “Oh my God, there’s a bum on the bus.” Her remark was repeated and made its way to the front of the crowded vehicle where the driver misheard her statement as “There’s a bomb on the bus.”
The bus driver immediately pulled over, opened both doors, shouted to the passengers to jump out, and started honking his horn to attract a policeman to summon the bomb squad.
(Who was more embarrassed here, the woman who inadvertently caused the alarm, or the driver who misunderstood? The legend doesn’t tell us.)
People need strategies to deal with embarrassment in real life. The aforementioned Edward Gross, a University of Washington emeritus professor of sociology, has described the case of a four-year-old boy who fell off the toilet seat and became wedged between the toilet and the wall. “He looked up with rather plaintive eyes at his baby-sitter and said, ‘That’s my favorite thing to do.” A well-known example of embarrassment-recovery from the world of opera is told about a famous Wagnerian tenor who, in a production of Lohengrin, missed the timing of his exit on a swan boat that went gliding empty across the stage. Supposedly, the tenor had the presence of mind to ask another person in the scene, “What time is the next swan?” In a similar vein, it is told that when a telephone on a stage set rang at the wrong time during the play, an actor answered it, and then handed the phone to another actor, saying “It’s for you.”
In my opinion, one of the world’s best legends in the category of a horribly embarrassing situation defused by quick thinking is this one about a dropped turkey:
The society guests in an elegant home were seated for dinner. The maid entered, carrying a large roast turkey on a platter. Just inside the dining room, however, the maid slipped, and the bird slid off the platter and onto the floor.
After a moment of stunned silence, the lady of the house said in a calm, even voice, “That’s all right, Lucy. Don’t be embarrassed. Just take that one back to the kitchen and bring in the other turkey.”
Lucy picked up the fallen bird, left the room with it, and soon returned, bearing a roast turkey on a platter. She successfully delivered it to the table before the man of the house, who without comment carved and served it to the guests.
And now let me reveal to you a trade secret of male college professors. One of our worst fears is that someday we will unwittingly step in front of a class to lecture with the fly of our trousers unzipped. How embarrassing!
This may explain why so many men in my profession prefer to lecture from behind a podium. And those who do lecture standing before the class habitually hesitate in their offices just before class for a quick zipper check. The code term to warn of an open fly—something all American males learn in boyhood—is “XYZ,” or “examine your zipper.” And it’s not just male college professors who suffer this fear; the problem of open zipper flies is common enough to have generated several urban legends.
At the simplest level, there’s the story of the businessman seated at his desk who notices that his fly is open. He hastily closes the zipper, not realizing that the end of his necktie is now caught in it. When he stands to greet a visitor, he is nearly strangled.
Slightly more complicated are the unzipped-fly stories told about bus or subway passengers. In one such tale, a man is warned that his zipper is open; he hastily closes it, catching a piece of the skirt worn by a woman standing next to him. An embarrassing extrication follows, as it always does in these legends, with the driver, conductor, and other passengers all joining in the struggle to free the two strangers from the zipper’s firm grip.
Another fly-on-the-bus story tells of a woman who accidentally drops her handkerchief, which lands in the lap of a seated man. She points at his lap, calling his attention to the hanky, and he glances down and thinks his shirttail is hanging out through his trouser fly.
The man eases the zipper down, stuffs the hanky inside, and rezips, leaving the woman speechless. One wonders how he explains the hanky in his pants when he gets home.
The first two urban legends following in this chapter (after the box) are open-zipper stories. Concerning the first story—an international classic of this genre—Robert Friedel in his wonderfully comprehensive book Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty (1994) wrote, “the ancient comic elements of mistaken identity, sex, and slapstick are all thrown together, with a readily available zipper in the middle.” Read on.
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“Two Painful Nose Jobs”
My cousin’s husband told me that a friend of his was at a wedding once and saw this happen: The bride and groom took turns cutting the cake, and as playful newlyweds often do, the groom started to mash the cake into his bride’s face instead of just gently feeding it to her.
As a reflex, the bride raised her hands to her face, and when she pulled them away they were covered with blood, and her white gown was stained with blood! The groom had pushed the cake so hard that he broke her nose.
One night this guy came into the ER with both hands cupped over his face. He wouldn’t take his hands down until the paramedics promised not to laugh at him.
When he finally took one of his hands down, they saw that one of his fingers on one hand was stuck inside his nose.
He told them that he had been picking his nose while waiting in his car at a red light. Then somebody had rear-ended his car, which threw his head forward and into his steering wheel. His nose had swollen so fast that he couldn’t get his finger out of it, and so he had come to the emergency room for help.
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“The Unzipped Plumber (or Mechanic)”
Newspaper friend Tom Ungles of Satanta, Kansas, an occasional visitor to Woodland Park, has forwarded a copy of a lighter vein item appearing in a Kansas newspaper.
The item gave us a few chuckles, so we pass it along to Courier readers for hopefully the same purpose…. We give you this “believe it or not” from the Arkansas Daily Traveler:
This story, purported to be true by those who tell it, has its locale in Lawrence, Kansas.
It seems a young wife noticed that the trailer home occupied by her husband and herself had developed a plumbing problem. She informed her husband of this fact and left the mobile home for an errand.
Returning, she found a pair of legs extending from beneath the trailer and, feeling playful, giggled, lowered the zipper on the pants, and entered the door of the house.
Imagine her chagrin when she found her husband lolling on the sofa watching television! When she had recovered her composure enough to explain to her mate what she had done, he in turn explained to her that he called a plumber when he found the repair job beyond his abilities.
Gathering their courage, they ventured outside together to attempt to explain to the plumber below the home. They found the plumber in the same position as before, except that he appeared to be unconscious from a blow to the head he evidently suffered when he reacted to the playful prank of the young housewife by quickly raising his head to see what was happening.
Horrified, the young couple called an ambulance and soon the vehicle with two attendants arrived on the scene to aid the injured plumber.
When
the circumstances surrounding the injury to the man were subsequently related to the two attendants, however, they became so overpowered with the humor of the situation that during a fit of convulsive laughter, they dumped the hapless plumber to the ground, breaking his arm.
Imagine, if you can, that plumber awakening in the hospital with a broken arm, and a knot on his head with the last positive memory being that of feeling his zipper being lowered.
We’ll bet that young couple received a bill for $51.88…at least.
From Australia’s Rockhampton Morning Bulletin:
A central west couple drove their car into Rockhampton Kmart only to have their car break down in the car park. The husband told his wife to carry on with the shopping while he fixed the car.
The wife returned later to see a small group of people near the car. On closer inspection she saw a pair of male legs protruding from under the chassis. Although the man was in shorts, his lack of underpants turned private parts into glaringly public ones.
Unable to stand the embarrassment, she dutifully stepped forward and tucked everything back into place. On regaining her feet she looked across the bonnet and found herself staring at her husband standing idly by. The repairman had to have three stitches inserted in his head.
The first item is from the Ute Pass Courier of Woodland Park, Colorado, April 15, 1971, sent to me by Charles Pheasant of Littleton, Colorado. The second is from the “Editorial Report” column of the National Lampoon, August 1988 “True Facts” issue. Though somewhat stilted in style, these items illustrate how newspapers borrow legendary material from one another and thus contribute to the spread of folk narratives. This story has had more versions than the victim had stitches on his clobbered head, but perhaps the most “standard” variation has the husband simply working on his car that is parked in his own driveway; unbeknownst to his wife, he enlists a neighbor or a professional mechanic to help him. This legend may reflect, on one level, the male fear of sexual exposure and, on another level, female uneasiness about initiating sex. The laughing paramedics are a typical motif of this and other urban legends about hilarious accidents.
“The Unzipped Fly”
The version that I heard in Denmark from my father (in the late 1960s or early ’70s) runs as follows:
A couple is at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. They have stalls and the theatre is packed. The drama has just begun when some latecomers appear, among them a young lady in a big chiffon dress. They have to get past a couple, and as everybody on their row gets up as well, the man notices that his fly is open. At the moment when the festively dressed lady is passing he pulls the zipper and, most unfortunately, the chiffon skirt gets caught. However much he tries, he can’t get it open again, and the woman angrily turns on him as he stammers some explanation. Hushing and irritated whispering is already being heard behind them. Her surprised escort and his confused wife see them go out close together, as he nervously whispers, “We have to get out and fix it outside.”
They had to have help from the attendant who cut them loose, and he had to pay for a new dress.
Reported by Carsten Bregenhøj in FOAFtale News (newsletter of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research), no. 24, December 1991. A similar version from Belgium was reported in a 1990 article in Fabula, (a journal of folktale studies). American versions of the legend usually involve an unzipped man on a bus—as in the May 10, 1991, Ann Landers column—or an unzipped man dining in an expensive restaurant. In the latter versions he snags the edge of the tablecloth in his fly and pulls the whole cloth and all the dishes to the floor when he rises from the table. In one of the few folkloristic studies of such stories, “The Most Embarrassing Thing that Ever Happened: Conversational Stories in a Theory of Enactment,” Folklore Forum, vol. 10, no. 3 (1977), Roger D. Abrahams relates a restaurant version of the legend as a personal experience. Later in the essay, however, he admits that it actually happened not to him but to “a couple of friends of mine exactly as recounted, or so it was reported to me” (my emphasis). Finally, there are some extremely elaborated versions of the story that include several further embarrassing incidents taking place in the restaurant; when the young man apologizes for the disturbance, the headwaiter invites him to “Come back anytime. You’re worth it in entertainment value.”
“The Golf Bag”
A golfer was having a terrible round, hitting ball after ball far out into the woods or straight into sand traps or water hazards. Finally at the eighteenth hole, after plunking three more shots into a pond, the disgusted player flung his whole bag of clubs into the pond and strode out to the parking lot, vowing never to play this stupid game again.
Five minutes later, watched by the same group in the clubhouse bar who had seen the earlier scene, the golfer returned. He borrowed a rake from a groundskeeper and fished out his golf bag, then sheepishly got his car keys out of a zippered pocket, flung the golf bag back into the water, and walked back to the parking lot.
Told around numerous golf clubhouses as a true local occurrence, although—to my knowledge—it has never been verified by eyewitnesses. In a 1990 newspaper column the story was told about Indiana University’s volatile basketball coach, Bobby Knight. The story resembles much fictional golf humor that circulates in the form of anecdotes and cartoons.
“The Unlucky Contacts”
Every spring Tom Dodds, a contributing editor of Family Safety & Health magazine, published by the National Safety Council, compiles a list of what he calls “Freak Squeaks”—accidents with a humorous twist.
Several readers of my column sent me Dodds’s 1987 list, published in the spring issue. I enjoyed the collection, as I always do, but two “squeaks” described in the article seem to be urban legends.
One is a variation of “Cruise Control,” included in Chapter 14. The other suspicious story deals with another fairly recent innovation—contact lenses. Dodds tells the story like this:
“When the DePaul University basketball team went on the road to play Dayton, forward Kevin Golden and guard Andy Laux were paired as roommates. Before Golden hit the sack, he put his contact lenses in a glass of water next to his bed. Laux woke up thirsty, grabbed the water, and guzzled down his roommate’s contacts in one mighty gulp.”
I have heard several versions of the swallowed-contacts story, generally attributed to some anonymous friend of a friend. And in a 1985 column attacking the vanity of contact wearers, columnist Mike Royko wrote, “We’ve all heard the stories about people who awake thirsty during the night and, in reaching for a glass of water on the nightstand, accidentally drink their contact lenses.”
A common variation of the swallowed-contacts story has a clever and provocative angle. In this version, a prominent man or woman is engaged in an illicit affair. He swallows his mistress’s contacts, and the accident leads to their misbehavior becoming known to the public.
In 1982, Diana McLellan reported such an accident in her Washington Post gossip column “Ear,” saying that it happened to an unnamed Midwestern congressman and his secret lover.
The congressman, she wrote, “gratefully gulped the glass of water his charmer had thoughtfully placed beside the bed.” The glass contained her contacts, which he swallowed unawares, and he only learned of it when she called him at the office the next day.
From my syndicated newspaper column for release the week of October 28, 1987. It seems to me that people who wear contacts do not usually park them overnight, like a set of false teeth, in a water glass on the nightstand, since usually the right and left lenses must be stored separately. Nor would most people, in my opinion, pick up a half-full glass of tepid water and drink it. Still, since this column was published, readers have continued to send me “true” accounts of swallowed contacts.
“The Wrong Teeth”
A husband and wife were taken to the Gold Coast [of Australia] for the day by friends. Relationships had been strained between them for some time, and the friends hoped that by taking them out fo
r a carefree day together, they might salvage their relationship. However, the husband made many sour remarks about his wife.
The party went surfing. The wife was overtaken by a wave and dumped, and when she splutteringly broke surface she gasped and confessed that in her panic she had opened her mouth and lost her false teeth. Husband sneered, then, when her back was turned, slipped his false teeth from his jaw and pretended to retrieve them from the sand. His wife washed them hastily in the sea, and slipped them into her mouth. Then she took them out with an exclamation of disgust and hurled them seaward, remarking, “Those aren’t mine. Somebody else must have lost them!”
Titled “The Teeth of the Evidence,” in W. N. Scott’s 1985 book, The Long & The Short & The Tall: A Collection of Australian Yarns, pp. 235–36. A different version of the yarn is included in Scott’s 1976 Complete Book of Australian Folklore. A parallel story is found in the Netherlands, as documented in “The False Teeth in the Cod,” a paper by Dutch folklorists Eric Venbrux and Theo Meder.
“Bungling Brides”
For years our rabbi has used his own version of the story you call “The Bungling Bride” to make a point about the necessity of understanding the reasons behind the performance of religious rituals. Rabbi Robert Schreibman of Temple Jeremiah in Northfield, Illinois, tells the story like this:
Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends Page 14