You know what an urban legend is, don't you? One of those stories that people pass along, thinking that they're true, but aren't really. Things like alligators in the sewers of New York. Well, guess what. They're all true. And they're all about me. I'm not only an urban legend. I'm THE urban legend.

"Call the men in the white coats!" you might yell. "Paul's got delusions again!"

Maybe. Maybe I'm just imagining this scar where my kidney was stolen while I was at a wild party in a Providence hotel room. Maybe my mom didn't really bring home an ugly little dog that turned out to be a Mexican sewer rat.

Or maybe it's all true...

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It started a long time ago, back when I was a kid. Just a little kid. I read a comic book and thought that anyone with a cape could really fly. So I tied a towel around my neck, then my cape and I jumped out the fifth story of the apartment building. I flew. Straight down.

Yes, I survived, or I couldn't have written this, could I? That proves something, doesn't it? So you see, I'm the beginning of the urban legend about the kid who believed Superman comic books. I'm the reason your mother didn't want you to read Archie and Casper the Friendly Ghost.

But that was only the beginning of my career as the originator of urban legends.

My pet baby alligator, "Twiggy", went for a swim in the toilet at my older brother's insistence. Twiggy is the alligator in the urban legend. How do I know? I'm also the kid who went down into the storm drain to find a baseball and spent two weeks roaming the sewers. I'd never have made it if it wasn't for my loyal alligator, Twiggy, who brought me food and warm blankets.

In high school, I was the kid who maxed out the SAT test just by guessing A,B,C,D,A,B,C,D. That set me up for college where I invented goldfish swallowing.

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I'm the guy who bought the cherry-red Ferrari for $10 from a disgruntled ex-wife in Cranston. You heard about the Prom Ghost? It was in that car where she left her faded, sopping wet corsage after I picked her up hitchhiking near Scituate Reservoir.

It was even my cat who dragged home the filthy dead rabbit which I shampooed and dried with a hair dryer and slipped it back into the neighbor's rabbit hutch in the dead of night. Yep, I'm the one who caused the poor woman to die of a heart attack when she found an apparent vampire rabbit, returned from its backyard grave.

So now you know. They're all true. The black helicopters? I helped paint them one summer when I was in college. The $2 million Rembrandt painting at the garage sale? It's hanging over my fireplace.

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The $100 Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe? Got both the recipe, and the bill to prove it.

But there's one urban legend that's not me. So it might not be true. No matter how upset I was about that rabbit incident, I was not the one who decided to dry his cat in the microwave.

About the author, Paul Pence: Not a life-long Rhode Islander, Paul got to Rhode Island as fast as he could. He has 25 years of writing experience and numerous publication credits including the Providence Journal, the East Greenwich Magazine, Weissmann Travel Reports, Travel Lady Magazine, Jackhammer, Your Skin and Sun, TravelNotes, TexWoman, and many others.

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