THE FULL MOON MADE ME DO

Anumber of years ago, I was a newspaper reporter. While I was on the police beat, my cop friends swore that crime and general craziness increased dramatically whenever there was a full moon.

A few years later, I went into public relations and was employed as the media representative for a college. About that time, the streaking craze hit college campuses around the country. One warm fall night, hundreds of our fine, young male students — and a few female ones — went gallivanting across the school’s quadrangle with their bare butts shining in the moonlight. The television cameras and newspaper photographers were there in full force, capturing the moment that made so many mothers and fathers proud of their kids.

The newspaper editor called me for comment. I made a little joke about what I had learned from the cops in my days as a police reporter. The next morning the paper ran a huge photograph of dozens of shiny college bottoms. The photo caption said, “The college spokesman said there was a full moon out.”

Obviously, a full moon has the ability to make a fool out of me. However, does it cause crime to go up or convince my young college friends to expose their derrieres? The researchers say no. One study in Miami-Dade County did show a correlation between moon phases and the homicide rate, but that study has since been rejected because of faulty data. A detailed study in San Antonio, Texas, crunched statistics on crime, weather conditions, and astronomical data over a four-year period. USA Today reported that the study debunked the evil notions about the moon: “Substantive lunar effects on crime were not found in the data analyzed here. Although popular culture, folk lore, and even certain occupational lore suggested that ‘freaks’ come out during full moons, this phenomenon was not reflected in San Antonio police data.”

“Lunar” and “lunatic” both derive from the same Latin word, so does that mean the full moon causes general foolishness? Not so, according to a study done by the Laval University’s School of Psychology in Canada. Researchers examined nearly 800 patients over a three-year period and found no link between psychological disorders and the lunar phases.

Therefore, we can conclude that the full moon really has no effect on crime or behavior. My cop and ex-cop friends will totally disagree.

So will the werewolves.