Side Hustles

CLARITY: EMERGENT PHENOMENON | Moment Three Hundred Forty-Eight

I made a lot of extra money
typing dozens of graduate research theses,
resumés for students.

I saw flyers around campus.
Thesis typing
three dollars per page.
I’d undercut that at two seventy-five.
They’d advertise twenty five dollars
for a professionally-prepared resumé,
I’d advertise twenty two.

I told friends
“I’ve made more money writing
than I’ve ever made in physics.”
That included earlier writing awards.

At the time,
most students outsourced typing.
I combined my typing skills
from that old mechanical Royal typewriter
I found in our attic back home
with my new skills
Microsoft Word and WordPerfect.

Unlike others,
I gave clients a soft copy
in addition to hard copy.
It was no loss for me.
I had plenty of theses and resumés
keeping me busy.

My side-side hustle
earned twenty bucks per poem
-- pieces eagerly sought by mostly ROTC guys
hoping to gain the attention of girls.
Once, I got lazy about it.
I gave two guys the same poem.
The problem was
they both ended up
in the hands of the same girl.
Luckily, it didn’t blow back on me.