How to Make PLURPLE

Donald R. Burleson

Copyright (c) 2022 by Donald R. Burleson. All rights reserved.





Plurple was discovered in 1979 by Theophilus Quickheave Boyle,
a man fortuitously named,
considering that he made his living sucking boils.

One evening he came home after a long, busy day's work,
with a stomach bulging full of pus,
everything that had been derived
from the purulent boils of his clients for that day.
He hadn't otherwise eaten anything.

For some reason he didn't feel terribly well,
and he went into the bathroom
and vomited it all up into the toilet.

He neglected to flush the toilet,
and he left the next morning on a long vacation,
staying gone for a month.

When he returned home and looked in the toilet,
he found a sort of furry scum growing all around
up under the lip of the toilet bowl,
the result of vomited-up pus
having been allowed to mold for a month.

He left it all as he found it, donating the toilet
to a museum of natural science,
complete with the stuff that had grown up under the lip.

That stuff is now known as PLURPLE.
The name is thought by etymologists
to have been derived onomatopoeically
from the sound of the pus-vomit
hitting the water in the toilet bowl.