Blue People

When I was a kid, I made a decision. It wasn't a bad decision, nor was it a particularly good one either. I chose to NOT be a Blue Person.

Those blue guys that play musical instruments weren't around back then. At least they weren't on television. As a matter of fact, TV wasn't around back then. OK, now I'm depressed. Back on subject:

The blue people I was decidedly NOT going to be like were the folks in the Superman comic books. Comics used to be printed on crappy paper using less-than-cutting-edge printing techniques, even for back then. So there was no subtle shading. Shading was accomplished ingeniously by using solid colors or a series of solid colors. When people were in shadow, they were not painted as black, that would be boring. Instead, the basic shape and deepest shadows were inked in black and the artist typically used bright blue for the shadow regions. Never noticed that? Check out Clark Kent's black hair. Grab an old comic and you'll see. It may cost you a couple hundred bucks to grab one ... actually, I'm not going to get into the discussion of valuable comics, I've already mentioned depression. I lost all of my comics. Except a copy of Richie Rich. Big deal. And used my baseball cards in the spokes of my bike. Duh.

So anyway, Superman was always perched atop a gleaming tower of steel and he was always brightly colored (unless he was passed-out somewhere with a Kryptonite hangover, then he was blue too). The huddling masses below, the common folks, were cloaked in shades of blue. Thus, blue people. Hey, it made sense to a nine year old. And it kind of makes sense now.

That was NOT going to be for me.

So I set about not necessarily to be Superman, but in a reversal of the accepted road-to-success process, to NOT be NOT successful.

And it's thinking like that, that has me so screwed-up.

Draw what ever moral values (or lack thereof) from that if you'd like. Knock yourself out. I've spent a fortune in therapy trying to figure it out. It's just easier to assume I'm nuts and let it go at that.

And to this day, I will NOT wear blue. Except for denim.