Curses! Broiled Again! by Brunvand Jan Harold

Author:Brunvand, Jan Harold [Brunvand, Jan Harold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1990-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

“The Pregnant Shoplifter”

Another one of those news stories that reads like a legend concerned a woman in Arlington, Virginia, who in February 1985 was nine months pregnant. The Associated Press reported that she went shopping at Irving’s sporting-goods store in a shopping center in Falls Church, Virginia. Store personnel took a look at her and decided that she was trying to smuggle a basketball out of the store. They detained her, threatened her with arrest, and searched her.

Even the journalistic reports of the incident introduced some variation into the story. The wire service quoted her as saying, “I had to disrobe in front of six male security guards and police officers in the store.” The Baltimore Sun , however, quoted the woman as describing the search this way: “They made me take off some of my garments. …. I had to shake out my maternity top.”

At any rate, the woman had a son the very next day and named him Darius. She later filed a $600,000 lawsuit against the store.

I at once suspected this story to be an urban legend because I first saw it in a September 1985 newspaper clipping that gave the gist of the incident with none of the above identifying details. It sounded more like an item from the tabloid press than a reliable news report.

Also, I came across some secondhand accounts of radio and TV reports of the incident. Columnist Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle had the same impression of it that I initially did and commented “Too neat. Sounds like a fable.” In fact, a few generalized retold versions of the story have occasionally been sent to me more recently by people who do not remember seeing or hearing any actual news report of the incident, but who have learned of it by word of mouth. So, even if the story was not a legend to begin with, it may eventually achieve legendary status.

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