Earlier today over at io9, Charlie Jane Anders posted about Archy and Mehitabel, the philosopher cockroach and the alley cat created by Don Marquis 99 years ago in the pages of the New York Sun. Back when I was a teenager living in Brooklyn, I was so in love with the prose poems purportedly written by Archy as he bounced from key to key on a manual typewriter that I did an homage for the student newspaper of South Shore High School.

Here’s what I looked like back then. Here’s what I sounded like back then. And below, from the February 1973 issue of Shorelines, is what I wrote like back then, when I was but 17 years old.

Well … what I wrote like when I was 17 and channeling a cockroach anyway.

If I’m recalling correcting, the piece won me some sort of student journalism award from The New York Times. And no, I don’t know what they were thinking either.

But now that I’m in the fullness of my powers, however, it occurs to me that it might be time for another homage.

Hmmmm …