You Mean I Didn't Invent The Bible?

While Kat and I discuss the Helen Keller paper, it suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea why she was so famous. "Do you know what she did?" I ask. We both sit puzzled. Sure she was handicapped, but blind, deaf, and retarded people are a dime a dozen. Why is she still so dear in our hearts?

We hit the Internet for the answer to our query. According to a couple of sources, Keller was both an advocate (how unexpected) and a lecturer, the latter demonstrating that, were she a little less dead, she might not be such a ridiculous selection for an assembly speaker after all. I'm pretty sure my opinion of Helen Keller has been tainted by The Miracle Worker, a film and stage depiction of her life, which portrays Keller as a stubborn, ill-behaved brat. Granted, she had a lot to overcome, but especially now that I encounter some wretched children, I'm not so easily forgiving.

When I read that Helen Keller was also an author, Shea pipes up that she was a plagiarist. At first incredulous, I soon discover that he is right, and that there was a controversy surrounding a story she wrote, "Frost King," greatly "borrowing" from Margaret Canby's "The Frost Fairies." At the time, there was some public outcry about the incident, because who wouldn't want to drag a teenaged blind, deaf, and retarded teenager through the mud?

Eventually, the controversy was diminished when her act of plagiarism was blamed on a case of cryptomnesia. For those of you who have the vocabulary of a two-year-old, cryptomnesia is what occurs when people believe they are creating something original, but are actually remembering a similar or identical work they have previously encountered. Plagiarizing from Wikipedia: according to the theory of cryptomnesia, the person is not engaging in plagiarism, but is rather experiencing a memory as if it were inspiration.

Sounds like a load of bull to me, Keller. Does she really expect us to believe that she's blind, deaf, retarded, and a cryptomnesiac? This person's gotta learn to stick to one affliction at a time if she wants us to believe her. Instead of calling her Helen Keller (mainly because each time I try to type Helen Keller I accidentally type "Hellen" with two L's), this individual will henceforth be referred to as Filthy, Retarded Plagiarist. Filthy Retarded Plagiarist should be imprisoned for her heinous act. Since she's dead, I say we dig up Filthy, Retarded Plagiarist and then put her in jail.

Speaking of digging someone up, does cryptomnesia remind anyone of necrophilia, perhaps acts of necrophilia that one has no memory of committing? Because I think I might have that, but I don't quite remember. You can believe me, though, because I'm not trying to suggest I have cerebral palsy and hypoglycemia at the same time. But no, I have never had sexual relations with the decomposed body of Filthy Retarded Plagiarist - or at least as far as I can recall.