Help me knock some sense into Mr. Rilch

[Rilchiam]

I can hear Mr. Rilch in the bedroom, still laughing his ass off over an exchange that went like this.

Me: No one really has the time to scrutinize each and every little Fun Size Snickers and roll of Sweet Tarts. All that’s just an urban legend anyway.

Him: No, f’d up s happens all the time. I heard about it constantly when I was a kid.

Me: No, I told you, no one’s every really given out contaminated candy. It’s just an urban legend.

Him: No, I’ve heard about it! Listen, you check the online papers over the next week, and I guarantee you—

Me: NO. There was only one such documented case, and that was the guy doing it to his own kid.

Him: I heard about it all the time!

Me: Did it happen to people you know?

Him: What?

Me: Did you read about it in the paper?

Him: Why are you putting me on the spot?

Me: Did you hear it on the—

Him: Did you hear about the guy who kidnapped a little girl and molested her and chopped her up and left her in the desert?

Me: That’s my point. Someone as sick as that will do what they do directly; they’re not going to dick around with candy.

Him: I’m telling you, there are going to be reports of candy with pins in it, or sprinkled with Drano, or—

Me: But do you have any cites for this? If you didn’t read about it in the paper, or hear it on the news, or it didn’t happen to someone you know—

Him: Well, I don’t remember anyone coming in with a bloody mouth, but—

Me: Then you have no proof that it ever has happened.

Him: I’m telling you—

Rilchiam darts across hall to office, sweeps up armful of Jan Harold Brunvand books, returns to bedroom and begins indexing. Finds relevant article. Mr. Rilch doesn’t want to listen. Rilch asks why he won’t believe a researcher. Mr. Rilch asks for Brunvand’s credentials. Rilch begins reading them aloud, eventually shouting to be heard over Mr. Rilch’s raucous laughter. She departs, indignant, as he continues to scoff at the idea of a “folklorist” as a valid source.

Finally I left without completing Mr. Rilch’s nightly headscratch, and flung myself onto the boards. So! How can I knock some sense into this guy?

[j_kat_251]

But isn’t it actually true that people doctor candy? I mean, more than one person in the history of all documented time… maybe not one guy on each block, but it does happen. Doesn’t it? Maybe Snopes has something to say about it, everyone listens to them.

[phouka]

He laughs because he’s threatened. He got caught in the wrong, and he knows it, and he lacks the cojones to admit to it.

Maybe at a later time when he’s not feeling so defensive, he’ll be able to admit you were in the right. Just now, not so much.

Of course, if he makes a habit of this sort of thing, you should purchase a fresh halibut and smack him in the face repeatedly with it.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

http://www.sun-herald.com/NewsArchive2/103002/tp1ch16.htm?date=103002&story=tp1ch16.htm

Joel Best, a professor of sociology at the University of Delaware, reviewed 50 years of newspapers and found only three stories of children poisoned by Halloween candy – all of them false. While there have been a few incidents of children finding sharp objects in apples, the authors of the Urban Legends Web site (www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/needles.htm) find that most of these reports are, like the poisoned candy, false.

I heard about it constantly as a kid, too. The one that sticks out most vividly in my mind was from the 1970s and involved poisoned candy straws.

And I found it, on Snopes.

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/hallowee.htm

Claim: Madmen have randomly distributed poisoned goodies to the little tykes who come calling on Halloween.
Status: Undetermined.

Were it not for a 1982 incident in Somerdale, N.J., the status line above would read “False,” not “Undetermined.” Fifteen children and one adult became ill after eating candy and cakes supplied at a school Halloween party there; what I don’t yet know is what was in the candy or how it got there. The few newspaper articles I’ve so far located are confusing and contradictory: one says tests on the candy revealed the presence of “Angel Dust” (PCP); another states tests for drugs were negative.

At this point, I don’t know if it was a case of deliberate tampering or random food poisoning. Even if it was a case of deliberate tampering, the target may have been a particular child rather than random victims.

Though I’ve downgraded this legend’s status to “Undetermined” in light of this one incident, I ask readers to keep an open mind until more information is available. Every other incident which at first appeared to be a random Halloween poisoning turned out to be an act targeted at one particular child, an accidental poisoning, or a death caused by something other than poison.

< snip >

To qualify as a Halloween poisoning, poisoned candy has to be handed out on a random basis to children as part of the trick-or-treating ritual inherent to Halloween. The act cannot be targeted to any one specific child.

< snip >

By far the most famous case was the murder of eight-year-old Timothy Mark O’Bryan at the hands of his father, Ronald Clark O’Bryan, in Houston, Texas. The child died at 10 p.m. on October 31, 1974, as a result of eating cyanide-laced Pixie Stix acquired while trick-or-treating. To make it appear more like the work of a random madman, O’Bryan also gave poisoned Pixie Stix to his daughter and three other children. By a kind stroke of fate, none of the other children ate the candy.

There’s a lot more, a whole huge discussion. Bottom line–sharp objects are more likely than random poison, since sharp objects have been found, but random poison, AFA Barbara Mikkelson knows, and except for the “unproven” New Jersey incident, never.

[Rilchiam]

Thanks, DDG. Now if I can just get him to sit still and listen to it all, without stopping at the first cite—the one where the guy deliberately poisoned his son’s Pixie Stix—and insisting that it verifies every single rumor he’s ever heard.

(I posted the condensed version of the dispute of course, but I remember now that at one point I said, “The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’.” :D)

No, phouka, he doesn’t make a habit of this. I think it was really just a matter of his having taken a lot of verbal abuse at work. He started out skeptical about the actual subject, then just let loose.

[MagicEyes]

*Originally posted by Rilchiam *
**
Rilchiam darts across hall to office, sweeps up armful of Jan Harold Brunvand books, returns to bedroom and begins indexing. Finds relevant article. Mr. Rilch doesn’t want to listen. Rilch asks why he won’t believe a researcher. Mr. Rilch asks for Brunvand’s credentials. Rilch begins reading them aloud, eventually shouting to be heard over Mr. Rilch’s raucous laughter. She departs, indignant, as he continues to scoff at the idea of a “folklorist” as a valid source.

Finally I left without completing Mr. Rilch’s nightly headscratch, and flung myself onto the boards. So! How can I knock some sense into this guy? **

As a folklorist, I’m very offended by this! We know lots of really cool stuff. He’s just mad that you’re right. I bet that happens a lot!

ME

[Rilchiam]

Well, I’m right a lot, but he doesn’t usually get mad! As I said, he had to take an enormous amount of crap at work yesterday, so I got the backlash.

[Guinastasia]

Perhaps you could get him to sign up here?

We’ll set him, “Straight”.

(Hehehe…I made a funny)