Supple Amounts

So I was teaching a couple sections of composition at a nearby campus this fall--it was my first semester there and I was feeling a little apprehensive, in that "Johnny, take the keys. . . hey, you can drive, can't you Johnny?" kind of way, especially after finally talking with another adjunct who crowed that he had boiled his essay grading time down to eight minutes, whereas I was still taking twenty--and next morning, rushing myself through the zillionth informative essay, I ran across this sentence: "So it's important to drink water in supple amounts."

Well yeah, I laughed, then circled the word with a question mark beside it, and moved on lickety-split, but days passed and those dumb words kept coming back to me, and every time I said them they just got yummier on my tongue, mmm, supple amounts. Maybe she didn't mean ample. Maybe she was onto something deeper and more subtle . . . Naaaaah. But like a bystander at a car wreck who slips a popped-off hubcap into his knapsack, I swiped her phrase. And bumped her grade by half a letter.