POST#2: Urban Legends:Hoax or Not?

Have you ever wondered if stories such as an Urban Legend exist? Particularly, the most common stories you have heard somewhere.

There are people who merely believe about these stories and made them aware on their surroundings, some believes that they are just bluffs, and there are scientific explanations behind those stories. One of the reasons is because back then, elders often tell these kinds of stories to scare children for them to avoid going outside too much, especially, when it is nighttime and sometimes, some of the stories were all made up just for entertainment.

I found this article accidentally while roaming into the net, Ken Lace posted about "A woman with a lump in her tongue". It is an Urban Legend that is also called “Icky Envelope,” “Envelope Roaches,” and “Woman Licking Envelope” which I have found and it caught my attention because I can partially relate on this habit. This legend was circulating around the internet and mails way back around 2000, so that means that this legend is old, even so,  popular because there might be some individuals that still research about this legend.

It is said that the legend was about a woman in California who worked in a post office and one day, she just licked some of the envelopes and postage stamps instead of using a sponge. The woman accidentally cut her tongue on the envelope. A week later, she noticed an abnormal swelling of her tongue.

She went to the doctor and found nothing is wrong. It was not sore or anything and she’s perfectly fine, but a couple of days later, her tongue started to swell more, and it began to get really sore that she could not even eat. So she went back to the hospital, and told the doctor that there really is something wrong with her tongue and demanded that something has to be done.

The doctor took an X-ray of her tongue and he noticed something so he prepared a surgery for her. After cutting her tongue open, a live cockroach crawled out, and told that there were roach eggs on the seal of the envelope and the egg was able to hatch inside of her tongue because it was warm and moist that made a perfect place for the egg to hatch.

It is also said that it was reported on CNN. Yes, it is really disturbing, since most of us use our tongues instead of using sponge because we think that it would be easier and faster. But there is this person named “ripleysmom” in a certain discussion called Disboards and he stated his opinions regarding about the legend, which he believes that it is not true and just a hoax.

“First of all, the story was not reported on CNN. Pasting such authoritative-sounding taglines into the text of hoaxes circulating on the Internet in an effort to give them credibility is commonplace, and this is just another case of some nameless prankster doing just that. 

Second, no one knows who "Andy Hume" is, so why give his supposed comments about working in an envelope factory any credence? It ain't all that tough to make up a comment and a name to go with it. If "Andy Hume" works for CNN, it's news to them. Searches of news databases for any reporter of that name turn up one who writes for The Ottawa Citizen, and wider searches turn up a British sports figure who also carries that name. There was also a Washington reporter, Sandy Hume, who killed himself in February 1998. But there's also no reason to assume any of those folks penned the comment now being circulated as a bolster to the e-mail.” Ripleysmom stated.

His statement somewhat convinced me. In addition, a cockroach’s egg is almost a size of a bean so isn't it a little bit obvious for you to swallow a roach’s egg? Nevertheless, after reading the legend, though it was obviously a hoax, I would never lick envelopes again, because we never know where it came from. 

Moreover, we will never know what little things are mixed in the glue that was used, I even read someone that the water came from the used mop.