The First Writer

He sat and thought, though he didn't know he was thinking. The meat was slowly roasting over what they would later call “fire” as he and the others sat and thought, though they didn't know it, either. Slapping at the small creature that was crawling in his beard, he knocked it to the floor of the cave. He had learned that the front end could hurt him, so he picked it up by the the other end, contemplated it for a moment, then popped it into his mouth and bit down. Immediately, his gag reflex told him that had been a mistake and he spat it back into his hand.

Poking at it, he noticed that it looked different now. Some of the inside was now on the outside and it stuck to his finger. He didn't like the feeling and he wiped the sticky finger on the pile of stuff he'd been absentmindedly grinding by rubbing two rocks together. This caused him even more concern, since the stuff now coated his finger. He would have sworn if he had known how. Instead, he grunted and shook his finger.

That brought a series of loud, short grunts from the ones who were watching. He didn't have a name for the sound, but he didn't like it, and he instinctively shot them all a dirty look and a curled lip. One of the little ones stuck out its tongue and made a noise like the one his back end made after a big meal. It found itself quite amusing.

Turning his back on the others, he stood, faced the wall and tried to rub the nasty stuff off on the smooth rock face. As he did, the constant cacophony of grunts, sighs and other sounds in the cave suddenly went away. Thinking those things on the side of his head had stopped working, he slapped one of them and quickly established two things: Slapping those things hurt, and they were, indeed, working.

Confused and somewhat dizzy from the sudden ringing in his head, he turned and saw that ALL of the others had stopped what they were doing and were now staring at the wall. He looked at his finger. He looked at the wall. Part of his finger was clean and part of the wall now wasn't. He rubbed a different part of his finger next to the mark and the cave was filled with sounds again. Another mark had appeared that looked a lot like the other one.

His brain went into thinking mode again, which temporarily disabled his motor functions. A sudden noise behind him enabled them again. One of the others was rushing forward with a dead sticky thing in its hand, headed for his pile of stuff. A swift kick put an end to that nonsense and the perpetrator slunk to the back of the cave.

Without knowing why, he looked at the others, grunted loudly and smacked his own chest with his forearm. This, too, was a learning experience: It made a loud noise, and it hurt. On the other hand, it also made the others back off, so his memory stored it as, "the tough guy thing." Totally worth the pain. Other memories stored it too, of course, so it would catch on quickly.

One of the young ones carefully approached, with its hands cupping something. Cautious, but not quite defensive enough to attack a small one, he watched it pour the contents of its hands next to his pile of rock stuff. It looked at him and toddled back to its big one with chest bumps.

The young one's gift (not that his mind had a word for that) looked just like his pile of stuff, only smaller and different in another way that he also had no word for. Unbeknownst to him, that young one would later be the very first one to pair the sounds “kuh” and “lur” and as a crude language evolved into naming, she would be dubbed “Arrr – tssst.”

Back to the story at hand. He wiped his finger on the fur of his animal skin and dipped it again into the sticky stuff and then into the new pile. A chorus (another first) of long, soft grunts ensued as he made a third mark, the same as the first 2, but somehow very different.

Grunts, howls and screams filled the cave as others rushed to find and crush crawly things. Other others ground more rocks together, forming new piles of stuff, along with the ever-increasing number of sticky pools. Sections of cave wall were claimed and soon the cave was glowing with marks of all shapes and kuh-lurs.

A sudden panic overcame him as jealousy set in. The other ones were doing what he was doing. Stealing his invention and copying his marks! He knew he had to somehow claim this new thing as his own. A thought process far beyond his understanding occurred and he shoved his hand first into a nearby pool of sticky stuff, then into a pile of rock stuff and finally pressed his palm and fingers to the wall next to his writing. He had, now, single-handedly invented the signature and the concept of plagiarism, as well as the term, “single-handed.”

Other ones did the same, however many of their marks were different and each hand print was different, too.

And there you have it, my friends, the story of the very first writer, (named “Ry – Trrr.”) Blame him for this abomination.

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