At 3:30, 13 or 14 kids spilled out of the school bus and began sprinting down the block. By the time they had reached me, they were already in mid-sentence.

"… there’s a monster in the Webkins world…"
"…and it’s slaughtering all the webkins…"
"…it’s true…"
"… all the webkins are dead…"
"…it’s true…"
"….Yeah, Mrs. Laura…"
"…mom, mom, listen to me…"
"…if you don’t sign on at 6 in the morning and 6 at night…"
"… then the monster kills…"
"… all the puppies and the kitties…"
"… you have to go onto webkins world and erase all your doors and pile up the furniture…"
"… it’s true…"
"… it happened to Dylan’s cousin…"
"… it chopped off the arm of his webkin…"
"… with a big sword…"

I shooed away the neighborhood urchin and took mine inside for a snack. Then I googled "webkins dead." I found a whole of lot of mommybloggers talking about this new urban myth. Some posts were from earlier in the spring. It’s taken a little while for the urban myth virus to come to my town.

Fun to watch this stuff happen.