Nine Tips

I love Snopes.com. It's the first place I go when well-meaning friends or even bosses forward me the "Nine Tips That Can Save a Woman's Life" (I found this in a quick Google search - it's more than nine, I know but a lot of the tips are the same as the stupid email and come from the same source: a self-defense instructor named Pat Malone who allegedly works for the FBI) email that people keep taking seriously and so when they get it and read it, they freak out and think every woman on the address list should know this information.

The tricky thing is, the tips are written in such a way as to make them seem like common sense. Don't fall for it. If you get crap like this in an email ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS go check old Snopes.com and make sure what you're getting isn't complete codswallop.

Read what Snopes has to say about the tips.

See what I mean about it sounding like common sense? check out number three:

3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy. The driver won't see you, but everybody else will. This has saved lives.

Sounds logical to me. Until Snopes points out:

The odds of being confined in the trunk of a car are slim to begin with, and they lessen when the extra requirement of the victim's being placed in there with hands and feet unbound is added. Very few vehicles have tail lights that are accessible from the trunk, so even if one's legs were free, there would be nothing to kick out to wave at others through.

A better plan would be to look for the glow-in-the-dark trunk release tab incorporated into some newer vehicles. Also, the back seats of many recent models fold down to accomodate the transport of larger items, so go deep into the trunk and push on the rear of the back seats to see if they open. If pushing fails, feel about on this area for knobs or levers that serve to latch the folding seat backs in place and work them.

I looked at my trunk and sure enough, there's no way to access the tail lights from the inside and my car is a '96.

Granted, there are things in the tips that have a grain of common sense to them such as locking your car door as soon as you get inside and before you start fiddling with your purse or cell phone or digging for keys. That's a big "Duh."

Anyway, I just felt like pointing this out in the vain hope of preventing a freaked out woman from forwarding the bad tip list around.