Hey Mikey! and Other Myths

Stories Persist

So I was talking to my brother last night, and somehow we got onto the subject of Pop Rocks. These, of course, are the fizzy candies that make little sizzling sounds on your tongue. They were introduced to the public when I was 10 years old, and I was a little surprised that Adam even knew what they were, because that meant they were still around--seeing as he's 18-plus years younger than I. I was even more surprised that he knew the Mikey story.

As reported here on Snopes, the Mikey story is completely false. The kid from the LIFE cereal commercials ("He likes it! Hey Mikey!") most emphatically did not die from eating a combination of Pop Rocks and soda pop, indeed he is still really most sincerely alive, and I knew the story had been debunked when I was a kid, lo those many, many (many!) years ago. Which is why it was amazing to find that the story still circulates, that my 20-years-younger brother was just as familiar with it as I had been.

Even Older

I shouldn't have been surprised. In the theatre, there are people who still get nervous if you whistle inside a theatre space. Sometimes they don't know why, but they've been told they should and so, actors in particular being big bundles of hypochondria and paranoia, they start to thrum and hum. The reason for it all is simple: back in the day (way back in the day), the people who worked the riggings in a theatre--the ones raising and lowering backdrops and set pieces--were former sailors, and they communicated with each other using, yes, whistles. So that if one were to casually whistle a jaunty tune inside a theatre, he or she was somewhat likely to have a sandbag dropped on his or her no-longer-whistling head.

We haven't had sailors in the flies for eons. We still avoid the whistling thing.

Something in a Name

It can get even stranger. I've told the Macbeth story before, but there's a variation on it: I have now met not one but two unrelated people whose last name just happens to be, really truly, Macbeth. So of course I had to ask the question: when inside a theatre, how do they introduce themselves? And yes, they are indeed reduced to having to say something like "Hi, I'm Mary the Scottish play."

I'm sure there are popular myths that are even older. (Black cat crossing your path, perhaps? I'll bet that one's got centuries on it.) But really, when I think about it, sure these things are nonsense--but they add some whimsy to life. They may be aggravating to the Mikeys of the world, and anyone who shares a name with the Scottish play, but there's never enough whimsy in life. And so, knowing I am in error, here's to poor dead Mikey, may he fizz in peace.