The Story of the Motorcycle Owner and the Exploding Toilet-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
This is a humorous story about a bad day in the life of a motorcycle owner who decided to work on his bike in the living room.
After performing maintenance on his motorcycle a man decided to start the vehicle without realizing the gear was engaged. This resulted in a disaster. Some versions of this rumor say he crashed through a plate glass window and ended up injured in the patio. Other versions say that the out of control bike with him cling to the handlebars crashed though a wall breaking many bones in his body. The paramedics arrived to the scene of the accident and transported the injured owner for treatment at the local hospital. His wife ended up having to clean up the mess in the living room and dumped left over gasoline, oil and fluids in the toilet of the nearby restroom.
Later the husband, after returning home from the hospital, went to the bathroom and tossed a lit cigarette into the bowl that resulted in an explosion. The same paramedics arrived at the scene and after hearing what happened, as they carried their patient back to the hospital, they began laughing so hard they accidently dropped him causing further injury.
The Truth:
This story is a spin off from an urban legend mentioned in the book “The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings” by Jan Harold Brunvand.
The original story is about a husband who dropped a lighted cigarette in a toilet unaware that his wife had emptied a can of hair spray in the bowl in an attempt to kill a spider.
This new version about the motorcycle owner was recently added to the act of folk singer / story teller Arlo Guthrie. Guthrie uses the story to introduce his “Motorcycle Song” that he wrote and recorded in 1967.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/s_XvJLVhKEU
Video of Arlo Guthrie sharing about the motorcycle found on YouTube
updated 6/14/11