Urban Myths

The origins of the urban myth which convinces small children that if they eat their bread crusts they will have curly hair are buried deep in an obscure, tightly knit neighborhood. Before the institution of this myth, it had been a tradition among the children of this neighborhood to throw their bread crusts outside for the waiting birds, who promptly ate them. However, soon the excesses of birds hanging around their houses overwhelmed the parents and one of them went on a bloody drunken rampage one night and killed every single bird in the neighborhood. With the birds gone, the children were told not to throw their bread crusts outside, but the habit persisted in a reasonable majority, and soon the alleyways were filled with a disgusting miasma of disintegrating bread crusts. To counteract the habit, the parents of the children held a secret meeting and agreed to tell their children that eating bread crusts would give them curly hair.

Unfortunately, they lacked done important factor: many of the children had no desire to have curly hair. The parents were disconcerted by this unforeseen roadblock, and they met again to brainstorm. After a few weeks of confusion, they were on the verge of abandoning the alleyways to their sticky fate when motivation came in the form of a rich woman who owned several houses in the neighborhood. While putting out her trash one day in April, she had sunk her brand-new Manolo into the quagmire, and she came raging into the parents’ meeting with the evidence of the ruination in her hand. The imagination of the group, formerly sluggish as an addict without his morning coffee, jumped into action; several of those present rented their homes from the woman. They explained that they had convinced their children that eating their bread crusts gave people curly hair, and that to motivate them they had decided to hold a contest in the subsequent months with rewards for the children with the curliest hair. All they lacked, they said, was a wealthy sponsor who would provide prizes.

The festival was held for the first time that June with great success, and the tradition continued until the grandchildren of the children were grown with grandchildren of their own. By this point, the origins of the festival were forgotten, and it was abandoned indecorously one year when its sole remaining advocate died a fitting death in her apartment, which was filled with cages of parrots, parakeets, and other domestic birds of all kinds. Upon her death they were released into the city in a great puff of yellow, green and red like the poisonous exudation of a mushroom’s spores.