The boy sent me this Wikipedia article about vampire watermelons. I was very skeptical, and there's always a chance that upon revisiting the site I'll find it's been 'corrected'. But if it's true, then isn't it fascinating! According to the article, it's an old Romanian thing which also applies to pumpkins and anything else left outside after around Halloween. Halloween pumpkins would certainly make more sense, knowing this. But watermelons? Apparently they aren't too scary to Romanian folk because watermelons don't have teeth.
One of my co-workers has a spider phobia - this explained why she sent a library patron to me, to colour photocopy some pictures of spiders. But the amusing thing was that she felt compelled to wash her hands after having to handle some books on the subject. (We all know books are great germ-carriers anyway, so it wasn't wasted effort.)
4 comments:
Wow, I've never known anyone who had to wash her hands like that - but I did work circulation with a woman who couldn't stand to touch books about snakes. Poor dear!
the best thing about wikipedia is the source links..you can just keep clicking further and further afield..and forget that you started with um...vampire..watermelons..
i never thought about germs on library books...damn..and we go all the time.
Nichole - it sounds like exactly the same thing, just a different phobe (if that's the right word)
Darth - library books are soaked in germs. That's why when I first started working there I got two colds in two months. It's probably also why the council which runs the library has a policy which doesn't allow new employees sick leave for the first three months...
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