Posted by dan on November 1, 2000 at 19:40:05:
In Reply to: You are victim of the urban myth my friend. posted by Eric Prothero on November 1, 2000 at 17:25:25:
I'm not utterly convinced... Now this may be utter coincidence, but it really did happen... One full moon a few months ago, I was on the bus back to a friend's house with him and his American girlfriend. Being English, I'm duty bound to make fun little jabs at her, just as she does to me. This particular night's banter went around her not being able to make tea properly. This isn't important, anyhow, but her boyfriend (my friend of MANY years) took considerable offense to it this time (never before) and, soon enough, we were in a heated argument - moments from physically assaulting each other. We'd never gotten that close to hitting each other before, and havn't since. The next day at work I was chatting with another friend of mine over ICQ about his evening. It seems that on his way home he saw two guys brawling outside a pub and one guy punch his girlfriend in the face (These two occourances may be frequent, but they just add to the point at the moment). Bewildered by all the violence people seemed to be witnessing that night, I grabbed someone's planner diary to check the full moon dates and boom, there it was, "Full Moon" with its little circle. This really doesn't explain anything, just saying that any myth (be they christian, pagan or hindu) may have some base in fact. -dan(who's had more pseudo-pagan girlfriends than hot dinners)
Sure enough the flames died down after a while and the night went off as planned with much drinking and merriment.