Colored People

By Eilene Lyon

At the grocery store checkout yesterday I saw a blue person. I don’t mean someone who was depressed, choking on a piece of gristle, a zombie, or (heaven forbid) a corpse. It would be rather disconcerting to find a zombie or corpse in the grocery checkout line – probably not good for business, either.

This gentleman’s flesh was, in fact, blue as a juniper berry. He was not black, brown, or any other such shade. I only saw him from the back and in profile, but he had gray hair and extremely pale eyes. And he was quite alive, well, and apparently in a good mood.

I tried not to stare, but I don’t recall ever seeing a blue person before, unless you count Violet in the movie “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” or maybe one of those beings in the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.”

I began to wonder…do blue people suffer discrimination? There seems to be a sector of our society that isn’t accepting of any skin color other than “white.” (Note: I can’t represent white without a background color or dark-colored outline.)

They don’t like “brown” people, I think. But there are many shades of brown: copper, chocolate, bronze, honey, burnt umber, rust, etc. Is a “white” person with a dark tan considered brown? Is a “white” person born with the last name Gonzales considered brown? Where do they draw the line in the brown spectrum?

How do they feel about blue people? Would they be accepting of green people? (Yoda? E.T.?) How about purple, orange (oh, yeah), or maybe rainbow colored?

Feature image: by Steve Richey on Unsplash