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IT'S A DENSE GRAY afternoon.  Just one more in a long line of gray afternoons.  As I scamper after the twisting and turning thoughts that are making their way through my brain, Reader Dear, I pounce upon this:  A scrap of the distant past!

It is seventh grade.  All of twelve years old, I've got a brand new transistor radio.  The Duke of Earl is a current hit.  Because I can listen to all the current hits now wherever I go, and do so with much regularity, I know this Gene Chandler song.  So when Mike, a pudgy adolescent classmate of mine, leans across my desk to sing, "Puke, puke, puke on Cheryl*," to the classmate on my right, I know exactly the why and the wherefore, and feel so fortunate to be in the know.  For Cheryl's sake, I  express great disgust at the sentiment!**
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*We all say it "shurl"
 **Yet I'm also secretly tickled by the clever play of words, undoubtedly the
why and the wherefore of this fragment's long survival!  I don't know what on earth you're going to do with this tidbit, Reader Dear, but it seems quite doubtful to me that you're likely to ponder it decades from now on some cloudy afternoon!***
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***Though one never knows!