Week 13 Storytelling: An Incident in Norman

Some claim that this story takes place in Norman:

A student was walking across campus in the rain when his shoe got stuck in the mud.  He tried to pull his foot out of the mud, but his shoe was stuck fast.  He couldn’t even get his foot out of the shoe! Finally, some of his friends came along and helped pull him out, but there remained a large hole where his foot had been.  This hole opened into a dark room underground.

“Who wants to go on an adventure?”

“I will!” said the student whose foot had been stuck in the mud. They found a rope which they tied around the student and he was soon lowered into the hole.  Let’s call the student Kevin. 

Once Kevin touched down, he looked around and saw a door.  He tried to open the door, but it was locked.  He turned around, trying to see if there was anything else in the darkness, but there was not.  When he turned back, there was a key in the lock.  He turned the lock and opened the door to reveal a young man seated at a table.  The small room greatly resembled a dorm room, albeit a very small and dingy one.

“Who are you?” asked Kevin, but the man was silent.

Three times Kevin asked and on the third, the man said “Turn around, take out your notebook and I will write who I am inside.  When you leave this hole, go to President Boren and make him read who I am, but Boren alone must read this.”

Kevin turned around, took out his notebook, and handed it to the man. The man wrote on the notebook, handed it back, and resumed his seat.

While Kevin was an adventurous and courageous student, he was not made of stone.  He was terrified and wanted to know who this man was and why he would not just tell him.  He looked like a student, but Kevin couldn’t be sure. “How long have you been here?” Kevin asked in a quavering voice.

The man did not respond and Kevin soon grew tired of the dingy place.  He returned to the whole and was pulled up. 

“What was down there? Was there anything good?” they all shouted as he reached the surface.

“There wasn’t anything down there.  I need to go see President Boren to tell him about the hole.  He needs to know,” Kevin replied.

As soon as he arrived, Boren’s secretary escorted Kevin into the office.  When they were alone, Kevin told President Boren what had happened.  Kevin told him of the hole, the door, the man, everything.  Then he took out his notebook and said to him, “Read, Mr. President!”

Mr. Boren read “I AM PLAGION!”

As he declared these words, the poor student became a statue.  

“Damn it, not another one,” Mr. Boren muttered.  “Louise, I have another statue for the campus! We need to find a free space!”

And it is said that that man was Plagion, who was condemned to stay in a dorm room, always reading the essay that he had plagiarized in English, never taking his eyes from the paper.

This is the story of Plagion, who is neither graduated nor student.

Author’s Note:

I chose to rewrite the story An Incident in Rome.  I kept close to the original story, although the original had a little more significance.  The original is the story of Pilate, who believed that Jesus Christ was innocent but acquiesced to the public's will. 

I made the student’s name Kevin because one of the members on my group project was being incredibly annoying as I tried to work on this before class.  He’s a great guy, he was just hyper, so I thought that it would be hilarious if this happened to him… at least the shoe part.

Plagion is the root word for plagiarism.  It was a Greek word, which translates to the Latin word for a kidnapping.  I thought that it was appropriate and was the only thing that I could come up with that would link it to what the student had done wrong.

I also wanted to inject a little humor in the story, which is why I added the little quip from President Boren.  It explains all the statues on campus too!

“An Incident in Rome” from Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane (1885). Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook. 

Image Source: University of Oklahoma. Source: Wikipedia.  Dorm Room. Source: Wikipedia. President Boren. Source: Wikimedia Commons