Oh,Oh!

         “Really George, I’m telling you, it’s great.”

         I sat there in utter amazement at what my friend Harry was saying. The look of astonishment on my face must have appeared quite comical to him. The grin on his face reminded me of the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.

         I had simply wanted to know how he did it. Today, as we were sitting in Mr. Post’s History class it happened again. At the beginning of the term Mr. Post had given us a writing assignment. Write a fictional story based on a historical event in our nations past. Everything was fair game, from before the American Revolution all the way up to 911 and beyond. I remember thinking at the time, “Piece of Cake”. After all, I was going to be a writer, and a journalist, a journalist during the day to make money, and a writer at night for my soul. All I needed to do was pick a topic. So for weeks I rooted through the history section of the library.

         I didn’t want to pick something obvious. I knew there would be several stories on the Civil War and still more on 911. Finally I decided on a little known event in history, the Whiskey Rebellion. It occurred in southwestern PA when the newly formed United States government tried to put a tax on the manufacture of “spirituous liquors.” I read everything I could lay my hands on that even mentioned the Whiskey Rebellion. A week ago we handed in our stories and today we received them back with our grades. I sat in class looking at my C plus, crestfallen. A handwritten note on the last page simply read, “You can do better.” This was not what I expected. After all, I wrote for the school paper, and the yearbook. We were talking about my area of expertise, if it can be said an 18 year old has an area of expertise. And as if to make matters worse, there was Harry, sitting next to me, proudly showing off his A. He had been doing better than me all year with his writing assignments. I just couldn’t understand.

         Harry and I had come up through the ranks of public school together. Harry was going to be an engineer and he often joked with me about becoming a writer. He didn’t care about writing. He didn’t care about history. He was here simply because he had to be. He would have much rather been down in the engineering lab building a robot or stress testing balsa wood beams than sitting in this class debating the merits of the Spanish American War. But there he was with his A. Seeing my grade he winked and said maybe I should think about changing careers.

         Now, here we were in the cafeteria and Harry had just told me his secret. “You see George, there’s this website, where people who write, post their stories, poems, articles, heck, even books! I’m surprised you didn’t know about it.”

         I did know about it. I just never thought about using it the way Harry had. He logged in and searched the site for historical fiction. He found a story that everybody rated highly and copied it into his word processing program. Then he edited out the copyright info, added his name as the author and printed it. “Instant A!” he said with that cat-like grin again.

         Slowly it started to sink in. My astonishment was changing to anger. “You can’t do that! That’s plagiarism!” my raised voice gathered some undesired attention from those seated nearby. Nervously, Harry looked around. “Sshhhh, keep your voice down. It’s OK. It’s not like these people are famous writers or anything. I mean most of them are just wannabe’s and if it wasn’t for this site they’d never get anybody to read their stuff. Besides, if some famous New York reporter can do it, why can’t I?”

         “It doesn’t matter.” The anger in my voice was evident to Harry now. “They're still not your words, your thoughts. It’s the same as robbing a bank. You’re a thief, nothing but a thief! And in case you forgot, that reporter got caught!” I got up and left, leaving my tray for Harry to clear. I was so angry with him. He was my friend for all these years and now I find out he’s stealing other people’s stories and claiming them for his own. I had to get out. I only had one more class for the day, American Literature. “Boy, that’s ironic.” I thought. I headed for the door. The teacher, Mr. Umholtz, wouldn’t miss me. I needed to clear my head.

         That night I logged in to the website Harry was talking about. I had been there before but hadn’t spent much time looking around. It was a bit intimidating and part of me was afraid to post any of my writing. “What if its not good enough? What if people laugh? What if somebody decides to steal my work?” I decided to pick something and read it. There certainly seemed to be a large variety of writing there. Not having a clue where to start I chose the humor category. We had a writing assignment due this Friday in American Lit. Write a humorous story. We were studying Mark Twain at the moment and I was having trouble starting my story. Maybe something in here would jump start my imagination. I read several short stories and a few even made me smile and chuckle, but I couldn’t get Harry out of my head. I wondered if he was going to submit his own work for this assignment or somebody else’s? My anger from this afternoon was turning to sadness. I couldn’t concentrate so I amused myself with reading the pseudonyms that people used to post their work. There were a lot of them. Timebandit, Dragoneyes, Grandmapenny, Rasputin, Orcatemyfork, The Milkman, Simply Blue Eyes and my favorite, Sultry Enchantress, were just a few of the folks posting their work. I wondered who they were. I wondered how they would feel if they knew Harry was stealing their precious words. I wrestled with the idea of going to Mr. Post and telling him what Harry had done. I knew it was the right thing to do. I also knew it would be the end of our friendship. That was a lot of years to throw away. Sleep did not come easy that night.

         Somewhere towards dawn I began to think how I would feel if I found out my words had been stolen and the anger began to return. I had never been paid for any of my writing. Did that make it any less important to me if someone stole what I had written? In one essence I was just as much a wannabe as the folks on the website. But wasn’t that true of all writers? Don’t all writers start out as wannabe’s? And what’s the difference? What does it matter if you’re famous, a published author, or not? The bottom line is it’s still plagiarism and Harry is taking credit for something he didn’t do. I decided to try talking to Harry one more time.

         “Look George. I’m not hurting anybody. They’re just words. Letters of the alphabet arranged in such a fashion as to tell a story.” I could see the engineer in him coming out. I resolved to maintain my composure and to try and reason with him. Maybe I could get him to stop. “Harry, they’re not just words. They are little bits and pieces of someone’s soul. They are the result of a lot of thought, a lot of sweat, a lot of write and rewrite. The effort they put into their writing is no different or less important then the effort an engineer puts into designing a spacecraft. That spacecraft becomes a part of him just as a story is part of its author. Can’t you see that? How would you feel if one of your classmates handed in your engineering work for their grade?”

         “No, I can’t see it. You can’t compare what I did to somebody handing in one of my engineering projects. I don’t even know these people. It’s completely different. Besides, if they didn’t want anyone to ste-, use their work, they shouldn’t put it up on the net. Everything’s fair game on the net.”

         I could see this was going nowhere fast. With a large lump in my chest I made my final plea. “Harry, if you don’t tell Mr. Post what you did, I’m going to.” There, I had said it, and it stopped Harry in his tracks

         “You mean to tell me that you’d throw away our friendship just because I got a better grade than you?”

         “No, I don’t want to throw away our friendship for anything. And it has nothing to do with the grade. It’s how you got the grade that matters.” Harry took several seconds to stare at me and then without saying a word, got up and left. The same sadness I had felt the night before came back but I was determined not to let it get the better of me. If our friendship ended I’d just have to live with that. Well, Harry had the weekend to think it over.

         Harry avoided me on Monday and as far as I could tell Mr. Post gave no sign that Harry had talked to him. Just before American Lit. class I stopped him in the hall and asked if he had made up his mind what he was going to do. Embarrassed, he looked at me and nodded his head. “I thought all weekend about it and I really don’t want to lose your friendship. I guess you’re right and I shouldn’t have done what I did. I talked with Mr. Post after class and he’s going to give me an opportunity to make it up by writing an essay on plagiarism and another short story. I also have to tell the person who wrote the story. I told Mr.Post you convinced me it was wrong."

         "That's great, Harry! I was hoping you'd come to the right decision. I feel so relieved. I didn't want to lose your friendship either. I knew deep down you realized it was wrong."

         "After American Lit I guess I’ll have to talk with Mr. Umholtz too.”

         “Oh Harry, You didn’t?”

         Harry sheepishly nodded his head. Toward the end of class Mr. Umholtz handed out our graded short stories. I was pleased to see a B + on mine. I looked at Harry and all the color had gone from his face. He was simply staring at his story. In big red letters across the front it said:

         “See me after class!"

         It was signed, "Rasputin”