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Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1997] Variations: Origins: The following blast from the past is one of the older print sightings of this legend: That joke formed the plot of a 1949 Robert Service poem, The Three Bares. In that version, Ma soaks her soiled garden slacks in a bucket o' benzine to get them clean. She decides to dispose of the used liquid in the outhouse and chooses to pour the mixture down the middle hole. The next morning, after a full breakfast, Grandpa visits the little house, sets down on his personal throne, lights his pipe, drops the used match down the middle hole . . . Grandpa's final exclamation ends the poem and sums up the tale: For what I aim to figger out is — WHAT THE HECK I ET? Grandpa wasn't the only one left pondering what he'd swallowed. In 1988, the highly respected wire services Reuters and United Press International ran as a news item the following specious tale gleaned from The Jerusalem Post: The hoax got as far as it did thanks to a lack of fact checking. A reporter for The Jerusalem Post heard this story, then rushed it into print without first verifying it. Reuters and United Press International picked it up from there. The Post was not the victim of a deliberate hoax, the newspaper said in a statement. Rather, a good tale got so tangled in the telling that it assumed a newsworthiness it should never have had. The exploding Israeli toilet story worked its way into the October 1993 Weekly World News (a publication best described as one that makes up interesting items on slow news days, and it's always a slow news day at the Weekly World News). This time the victim had a name: Saul Frankel. He was also quoted as saying, Next time I hope she just stomps the roach. The legend's undeniable charm resides in the wonderful picture it creates in the mind's eye. One can't hear the story without seeing the fellow still seated on his commode, half-charred and smoldering, a rueful look upon his face. Brunvand mentions the story was a rural gag about outhouses long before it began to circulate as an urban legend adapted to indoor plumbing. The dropped stretcher motif shows up in another legend, that of a naked man clawed or cold-nosed in an sensitive part of his anatomy. Legends can sometimes share the same memorable motif. Every now and then at least part of a legend will come true years after the full version has been in circulation. In April 1998, various news agencies reported on a German camper who died from injuries received when a camp-site toilet exploded as he tried to light a cigarette, the resulting blast throwing him through a closed window. The incident supposedly happened in Montabaur, a town south of Bonn. The suspected culprit was either gas leaking from the septic tank or a defective natural gas pipe. The unnamed man died in hospital two days after the explosion. I'm still not entirely sure I believe it. Every one of those reports read almost word-for-word like all the others, leading me to conclude the story issued from only one source. Though the text of it did read like a news item, the victim was never named. Color me still a bit disbelieving but willing to be persuaded. However, in 2004, a man in West Virginia was hospitalized for burns after his lighting a cigarette in a portable outhouse caused that structure to explode, an instance of ostension. Bodily gases were not the culprit in that accident, but rather a breach in a pipe that carried gas underneath the portable toilet. The cigarette unsuspectingly lit by 52-year-old John Jenkins of Brave, Pennsylvania on 13 July 2004 touched off an explosion that blew the top off the port-a-loo and inflicted third-degree burns to 20 percent of the man's body. Jenkins managed to drive himself to the Clay-Battelle Community Health Center in Blacksville. From there he was transported to Ruby Memorial Hospital to be treated in its burn unit. He received skin grafts on his forearms and spent a week in the hospital recovering from the blast. A version of the legend came true in August 2010 in England. A 28-year-old man dispatched by his wife to deal with a spider lurking behind the toilet sprayed the beastie with the contents of an aerosol can. The light bulb in the bathroom was blown, so in an effort to check on whether he'd succeeded in killing his prey, the man used a cigarette lighter to illuminate the room. Said process ignited the gas fumes and caused an explosion that was so strong that it blew the man off his feet and lifted the loft door off its hinges. The hapless spider-slayer suffered flash burns to his head, legs, and torso, necessitating a trip to the hospital to have his wounds attended to. In its most common form, the legend requires that a woman's folly leads to a fellow and the toilet he's sitting on being blasted to Kingdom Come. (In a few non-standard tellings, the one who laid the trap is said to be a maintenance man or washroom attendant, both characterizations stereotyping that individual as being of lower intelligence.) Predating them all is this item gleaned from a 1943 armed services newspaper where it was presented as a true story: Urban legends rely on stereotypes to make them work, and in the world of contemporary lore, women, maintenance men, and washroom attendants are totally clueless about complex matters (such as those involving explosive substances). Dumping gasoline down the crapper, using liquid fuel as a cleaner, or spraying hairspray into the bowl in an attempt to kill a bug (wouldn't a quick flush have solved the problem?) are seen as activities no typical man would be foolish enough to engage in but are of course well within the realm of what the little woman is capable of. A man's home is his castle, and the bathroom is seen as his throne room. His being blasted off it is nothing short of a palace uprising. Sightings: In an episode of TV's L.A. Law (Smoke Gets in Your Thighs; original air date 15 November 1990), Douglas Brackman tries out the office men's room just as Murray (Roxanne's father) finishes remodeling it. He lights a cigar, unaware that Murray has dumped turpentine into the toilet; the resulting explosion sends him to the hospital with burned buttocks. (Although paramedics are shown wheeling him out of the office, they don't drop him or tip over the gurney.) The dropped stretcher motif shows up in an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, titled My Mother Can Beat Up My Father (original air date 23 September 1964). Rob is injured while trying to demonstrate a judo throw using a stuffed monkey. When the ambulance crew learns he lost a fight with a toy, they laugh so hard they drop their patient into the rose bushes.
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