My co-worker asked for my assistance in writing a good recommendation letter for her daughter who's applying for a scholarship. By force of habit, I left some words in the draft that totally went off on a tangent: Sincerely yours, Monica M*** the greatest chef of all time. I had meant that as a compliment and as a gesture of appreciation for all the goodies (and calories) that she has so far shared to me. She caught it, said thanks, and went ahead to delete the line before printing out the final form. 

Force of habit. 

That is one of those lame pranks that I have always thought as cute. And I've done it since college, especially since I had a lot of opportunities with classmates and friends seeking for my help with Essay Writing. I usually put those unrelated surprises in the middle of sentences with the main purpose of wanting to find out afterwards if the person I helped had actually exerted some effort by reviewing or reading it again at least.  After all, that's their project, that's their grade, that's supposed to be their learning, not mine. And then one day, the "I want to eat spaghetti"  I had cleverly inserted in one of my friend's paragraphs -- I think that was her Custom Term Paper on "The Case Study of the Subconscious Mind of a Girl named Claire who likes to Write and is Suffering from a Strange Eating Disorder" *LOL* -- made it to the final draft, which the professor duly encircled and labeled with a big question mark, after which my classmate let out a loud snarl and shot me a surly stare that if stares could kill, I would have been maimed, dismembered and butchered into unidentifiable smithereens by then.

Though the joke is usually on them, that doesn't mean that I never tripped on my own foot.  In my first job after college, I wrote a lot of business letters that my Type A (more like Tight "A") boss would ALWAYS peruse before sending out.  One late night, I was slaving off on a presentation and some letters and I was stuck somewhere trying to findthe right words so instead, I wrote in the middle of one paragraph, "and yes, my boss owes me big time for this...a dinner of Kobe beef, an all-expenses paid trip to the Bahamas..yada yada".  Unfortunately, I was too sleepy that I forgot to delete it before submitting it to HER.  She spotted it the next morning and by the Grace of God just laughed it off -- because normally she would be interested in skinning me alive (Whew! Just another proof that miracles happen and that God loves me). But I had to waste some minutes cleaning up my letter and reprinting it, when I could have spent the extra time fluttering my eyelashes to a gay co-worker I used to have this ginormous and desperate/bordering helpless/definitely hopeless crush on.

And then there was the controversial three-letter word that starts with S  and Ends with X, that I wrote in a Psychological Report rough draft for my co-trainee back in those days when I was a starving graduate student. Back then, I was hanging out with scholars who were exceptionally precocious especially during their toddlerhood (and I, who I believe have some degree of undiagnosed attention-deficit since birth, still have no clue how I managed to keep up with their blistering pace). She spotted it amidst a flood of psychological jargon, of course. Right away. So skilled and quick it was almost...uhm...Special.

Anyway, some of those who have fallen victims have decided to research and read and analyze and cull....then write their own pieces in the end.  *I want to go bungee-jumping*. They also must have learned how to cope with the time pressure and the crazy academic time-table and then discover their own writing prowess, however disorganized. Good for them *and color my hair purple tomorrow* Some most likely have asked for other forms of Research Paper Help in extremely desperate times, but not from me.

Purple.