Prove It

I have been accused of plagiarism at least once a year since the first grade. It tapered off in college, thankfully, when expectations finally caught up at the 'Ivy' of NYS Schools. Up until that point, it was one paper after another with the word "yours?" scribbled in the margin followed by "see me after class" abruptly underlined in red.

The inherent problem with being a prolific reader, especially at a young age, is that one adopts a comprehensive vernacular at an astounding rate. This, and a penchant for thesaurus-ing due to an unnaturally early aversion to repetitive language sets off the 'bullshit detector" in teachers more often than not.

Year after year, in front of one teacher or another, I have to sit and explain that my inexplicably extensive vocabulary is not the result of thumbing through books (or the early google) and jotting down someone else's answer word-for-word to mundane questions about literary themes or economics or post-Mayan civilization...whatever subject of whatever teacher is sitting in front of me doing the questioning. I have to sit and explain that yes, I know what "verisimilitude" means well enough to use it in a sentence, I know how elasticity affects demand, and I understand that "irregardless" isn't a term... or whatever I'm defending this time.

Whatever it is, it's a far cry from what my peers are able to churn out on their MTV-induced vocabularies and world views. In reality, my grasp of language and vault of facts is directly proportional to my lack of friends. Without a social life, I immerse myself in newspapers, politics, literature, history, theater and sop up the juice of their fruit like a sponge. An embarrassing admission, but apparently not sincere enough to be believed since it's expected that all elementary/middle/high schoolers should still only be able to loosely string together sentences and that the pen lines they scrawl across unassuming, non-college ruled paper constitutes thought. The average achievers aren't frowned upon, it's the overachievers who get cornered in with your standard, under-medicated, trouble makers.

So when they ask for the final time in one interrogation session or another, "your words?":

I'm in 11th grade and this will be the last time I am questioned. Of all people, it's my English student teacher standing there with his arms crossed. I imagine teachers are trained to do this: He gives me that knowing look, slides my red ink-laden paper across his desk and lifts his eyebrows up into his hairline as if the higher the brow, the more potent the truth serum.

For every teacher that has done some variation of this dance with me the odds stack in my favor. The card I've got in my hand is the knowledge that they have no book, no article, no paper in front of them that reads verbatim (or even close for that matter) to what I'd handed in. I don't dare play that hand though. If they're bold enough to question my integrity I at least owe them an honest shot to make a problem student out me. I explain my love of reading and my stunted social stature (complete with graph), flash the thesaurus that I carry around every day of my life for them and rattle off definitions to the red-flagged words that set them off in the first place. It's no full house but often enough to elicit a sigh and a "fine, that'll do." The problem with accusing someone of plagiarism is that you have to substantiate your claim with more than suspicion. They're always bluffing. I know this.

At this point though, I'm fed up. These debates of intellectual property theft used to be a partially humorous process and most teachers have come to terms with the fact that my word smithing is my only legitimate claim to fame. But this guy is new and he's trying to be a hero and I've had to do this more times than I can count. My only response now:

Prove it.