Different Shades of Blue

          In the story, "Am I Blue" by Bruce Coville, Vince is a 16 year old boy struggling with his sexual orientation while getting constantly bullied. Soon after a rough encounter with Butch Carrigan in which he is thrown into the mud, a flamboyant fairy godfather named Melvin appears to help him out. Melvin offers Vince three wishes, and Vince eventually decides to use a wish to turn every gay person blue for a day, one of the great gay fantasies.
          Melvin is allowed to give Vince three wishes, and teach him along the way. While talking to Vince, he asks if Vince knows the three great gay fantasies. Vince says he doesn't. Melvin then replies, "Skip the first two. You're too young. It was number three that I wanted to tell you about anyway. We used to imagine what it would be like if every gay person in the country turned blue for a day... So all the straights would have to stop imagining that they didn't know any gay people... and survived the experience just fine thank you... The hiding would finally have to stop." Melvin then offers Vince the "sight". He lightly touches Vince's eyelids lightly, and when he opens his eyes, there are shades of blue all around him.
           Later, Vince uses one of his wishes to turn everyone gay blue all over the country, just for twenty-four hours. Once everyone who is gay turned blue from coast to coast, people realized what it the significance of the coloring was. "The reaction ranged from panic to hysterical denial to dancing in the streets." When Vince is awarded the "blue sight", (a few hours before everyone else, mind you) he constantly describes the different shades of blue he sees. "Some were bright blue, some were deep blue, some just had a bluish tint to them." When Vince asked his fairy godfather Melvin about the shading, he responded, "It's an indicator of degree. The dark blues are pretty much exclusively queer, while the lighter ones are less committed- or maybe like you, trying to make up their minds. I set it up so that you'll see at least a hint of blue on anyone who has had a gay experience." I really like this line because it's so meaningful. The author didn't just say, "People turned blue all over the coast," or something along those lines. Instead, he made the effort to express that everyone was a different shade, some more than others. If he had made everyone just "blue" it would've really created a separation between blue and non-blue, or gay people and straight people.
          I think the different shades of blue is such an important part of this story. It represents the fact that no one is one thing or the other, we're all different and no two people are exactly the same. It also reminds of the saying, "There is no black and white, but many shades of gray in between." When everyone was awarded the blue sight, it would've prevented people from saying that people were gay, or blue, because what does that really mean? There were so many different versions of that. The definition of "gay" is "of, indicating, or supporting, interests or issues of pertaining to, or noting the same sex". That exact definition of course, does not apply to everyone. It's impossible to define a group exactly to the point because no one is the same.
          People need to stop giving each other labels, because they are rarely one hundred percent true. We, people, need to stop judging and comparing ourselves to other people and everyone in general, because no two people are exactly the same and there never will be. This reigns true in so many parts of everyday life. If we all just stopped trying to categorize everybody else, we could all just accept each other for who we really are.