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All Night Long:  A Journey Through the World of Sleep Deprivation
                                --author unknown

It wasn't a mistake.

No, it was there right in front of my eyes, listed on the syllabus of
the girl seated next to me in my economics class.  I didn't have mine 
because it got swallowed by the vortex in my car on the very same day 
that I got it.  But there it was, listed in all capital letters:

        RESEARCH PAPER RELATED TO ANY SUBJECT DISCUSSED IN CLASS -
        15 PAGES - WORTH 85% OF FINAL GRADE - DUE MONDAY THE 15TH

I was in trouble.

"Um, what's today's date?" I asked the girl.

"It's the 12th," she said without even looking at me.

"Are we in that month?" I asked again, pointing to the paper's due date
on the syllabus.

"Yes," she said with a nasty little sigh, and that's when I had the same
feeling in my stomach that I felt when I was 14 and I came home drunk for
the first time.  Well, I didn't just come home, I was carried home with
vomit in my hair as well as up my nose and my mother, who has never
imbibed more that two daiquiris in the same 24-hour period, convinced herself
that I wasn't drunk, I was "spaced-out on LSD."

Regardless, I had less than three days to create a research paper, since 
I was positive that I couldn't buy one with the $3.67 I had left to my name.
I had only one choice:  to pull three consecutive all-nighters in order
to carry this little charade off...

NIGHT ONE--THE DIET PILL OVERDOSE

First thing, I scored some diet pills from this little anorexic friend of
mine who assured me that, when taken in the proper dosages, the pills would
make me alert and spunky, and that's what I needed.  I needed spunk, I told
her, I needed energy and pop.  She told me to take three.  I took seven in
case she didn't know what she was talking about.

Forty-five minutes after I popped them, I sat down at the computer, ready
to plagiarize my first of 15 pages.  That's when I noticed my leg
twitching, a little at first, kind of like a spasm.  It was bugging me,
so I decided to walk it off, so I did, walking back and forth, and then I
noticed that my arms itched a little, so I scratched them, up and down, up
and down, and I needed a cigarette, so I smoked five of them end-to-end
before I realized that I really needed to *run* somewhere.  Run *anywhere*.  
Just *run*.

When the sun rose 10 hours later, I had smoked 40 cigarettes, my arms were
bleeding, and I had painted my kitchen.  I hadn't written one single word.
I decided that I hated my anorexic friend and that I was going to make her 
eat a box of Twinkies at gunpoint.

NIGHT TWO--THE COFFEE OVERDOSE

Saturday night, I chose a safer route to consciousness by drinking coffe, and
I consumed a gallon of the French Vanilla variety before my hands started
shaking worse than any DT's I've ever had and my intestines siezed.  I was
on the crapper when my first anxiety hit.  I vaguely remember calling my
mother in a fit of tears, telling her that she ws right, I should have
become a dental assistant like she said because I wasn't college material 
and, as she reminded me, both sides of the family have a history of bleeding
gum disease and that I could have gotten bridges at a discount when my
own teeth began to fall out.

NIGHT THREE--MODERATION

I decided on Sunday to combine the two preceding methods in less demonic 
doses and I plopped myself at the keyboard with two diet pills in one hand
and a two-liter bottle of Jolt in the other.  I did indeed shake a little and
picked all of the fresh scabs off of my arms, but somehow, when the sun rose
two hours before class started, I had fifteen pages of complete and poetic 
bullshit stapled and ready to hand in.

I walked into class and sat down.  I smiled at the girl next to me.

"It's all done," I said proudly, producing the paper from my backpack.

"What's 'all done'?" she replied, looking a little confused.

"The paper that's due today," I answered, thinking that this girl was
stoopid with two o's.  "Remember?  It was on the syllabus?"

"That wasn't for this class," she snapped like a gator.  "That syllabus was 
for my next class.  We have a test in here today."

Everybody makes mistakes.  EVERYBODY.