A Folklore Collection Essay
A Collection of College Cautions
Urban legends have a mysterious way of circulating through every type of person. Whether you are a trusting girl, a macho man, innocently elderly, or anywhere in between, urban legends makes one feel that anybody can fall victim to what they just heard. This is largely because these legends are always presented as factual happenings, and usually connects the teller as being a friend of a friend the legend “actually” happened to– or as some folklore scholars like to call it, “FOAF tales,” standing for Friend Of A Friend. This adds validity to the truth of its occurrence. According to David Holt and Bill Mooney, who are folklore scholars, this is “part of the reason the tales are so enjoyable…Without this element of ‘truth,’ urban legends could go the way of old jokes, lurking forgotten on the sidelines of society” (Hairdo,11). Amongst the many groups that urban legends target, college students have their share of passing tales.
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Take “The Roommate’s Suicide” and “Aren’t You Glad You Didn’t Turn On the Lights?” for example. These are most often heard and told among students who live on campus in dorm rooms. “The Roommate’s Suicide” insists that if somebody’s roommate commits suicide, then they are automatically entitled to straight A’s for that semester. This is supposedly due to the emotional stress brought on by the suicidal tragedy that inhibits proper concentration and study. “Aren’t You Glad You Didn’t Turn On the Lights?” is somewhat related by the death of a roommate. It tells of a girl returning home from a party who doesn’t turn the lights on when entering her room, hoping to not wake her roommate who she presumes is sleeping. When she awakes the next morning, she sees her roommate lying dead on her bed with the message, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?,” scrawled on the….Show More Content….