The Copy Cat Chronicles

I hate plagiarizers, copy cats, word-stealers. But I have to tell you, I tend to believe Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard student accused of intentionally plagiarizing passages from Sloppy Firsts for her book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.

Sure, several-plus lines are almost identical and that’s a little weird. But the main reason I don’t think she plagiarized is because it would be a stupid thing to do. She would know that she’d get caught. And Kaavya’s no idiot.

As a victim of plagiarism myself, I’m the last one to take her side. Check out what’s happened to me:

-About six months ago a college newspaper published one of my MSN stories with the byline of one of their students.
-About two months ago a man in New Hampshire or Vermont or somewhere took one of my MSN stories and used it as a “letter to the editor” as if he just happened to have all these ideas for places men shouldn’t pick up women.

Both of these wrongs were ultimately…rightened? Unwronged? But once I was the victim of plagiarism in a much more blatant, hurtful way with no consequences to the thief:

It was about 1987 and I was in Girl Scout Troop 114. We had a speaker come talk to us and the troop leaders asked us all to write thank-you notes to her. As an aspiring writer I knew I had to do better than the typical “Thank you for coming to talk to us. We learned a lot. Bye, Elsa.” So I created the most brilliant thank-you note. On the front was a drawing of an Asian girl with some mock Chinese letters. (I didn’t say it was PC.) On the inside it said, “That’s thank you in Chinese!” I proudly showed it to the other scouts who were impressed with my creativity. Then when we all turned it in I noticed Jenny Fargo's card:

The front had the exact same drawing (although maybe a little better) and mock Chinese letters. But on the inside it said, “That’s thank you in Japanese!” Furious, I grabbed her card and brought it to the troop leaders. I shook it in front of them and screamed, “She copied me!! She stole my idea!”

They calmly examined her card and then my card. And do you know what they said? “She didn’t copy you, Elsa. See? Hers says Japanese. Yours says Chinese.”

Can you believe she got away with such a horrific crime? So you can see that after what I’ve been through I am in no way sympathetic to those who can’t come up with their own ideas. But I feel bad for Kaavya. Everybody's ganging up on her. I'm going to send her a note to let her know I've got her back. And I have the best idea for what it should look like. And if you think I'm showing you or Jenny Fargo you can forget it.