Category: Daily Prompt

I’ve always wondered where the idea of blue being used to describe a sad emotion came from. Blue can be an incredibly vibrant color when at its best. I remember when I was a kid my “uncle” had this bright blue shirt that he would always wear on Sundays. It was something we could count on whenever we saw him on a Sunday, that bright blue shirt and a smile on his unshaven face. I never asked him about that blue shirt but I always thought about it, and what it might have meant to him. As I got older I realized there actually must have been a number of different shirts all in the same color because just one would have worn out or faded with time. He was always happy in that shirt, so I equated that color with happiness. Back then when anyone would tell me they were feeling blue, I would smile and say, “Great!” never minding their confused expressions.

There are so many different shades of blue, too, something else that didn’t truly resonate as a child. The sky was blue, and I knew it wasn’t the same blue as my uncle’s shirt, but my brain didn’t really process. My uniform for private school was a yellow shirt with navy blue pants. They were so dark they were hard to distinguish from black. I couldn’t reconcile the bright blue of the shirt with the light blue of the sky with the dark blue of the navy pants. That every single one of those things could be blue and yet be so distinguishable from each other was mind boggling. Blue seemed to me to be in just about everything around me, and I looked for it everywhere. Continue reading ““Messy” is the new “Blue””