The story “Am I Blue?” by Bruce Caville is about a sixteen year old boy named Vincent who was treated poorly because he was supposedly thought to be gay. Vincent’s fairy godfather appears and attempts to help Vincent. Vincent discovers that there are people throughout the whole world like him that have been bullying because of who and what they are or thought to be.
Melvin, Vincent’s fairy godfather, tries to help Vincent by giving him advice and three wishes. Melvin teaches him that people have been treated differently because of what others think they are and not what they really are, “You may be, you may not be. The point is, you’re getting picked on because people think you are.” I think that it is unfair for people to treat others this way. It’s not fair for the falsely accused but it isn’t right for the gays either. It’s not their fault. They should be able to want to think what the want to think and not be punished for it. Also, Melvin says that people try to lessen the impact of what others say to them by using it themselves. “Taking back the language is one way of jamming the grinder. My friends and I call each other faggot and queer is the same reason so many black folks call each other nigger, to take the words away from people who want to use them to hurt us.” This way, people won’t be able to hurt them as much because the words have become casual among them. People discriminated around the world have also been using this. The words that use to hurt them have become part of their language.
Vincent gets three wishes from Melvin. The first is unintentionally used to change regular coffee into Swiss double mocha. The second wish is to give everyone a sense called “gaydar” for 24 hours. The “gaydar” indicates if a person is gay or not by seeing how blue a person is, ranging from dark to just a hint. By doing this, people will see that there are more people like that than they thought. People will no longer imagine that they didn’t know any gay people. Also, it would bring the gay people “out of hiding” because they would know that there were so many people like them. People would have to accept that so many people were like that. I think that if this happened in real life, the same thing would happen as Melvin describes.
This story shows that people should not discriminate others especially if it turns out to be false. People in real life have been treated wrong because of how people think they are. It doesn’t mean it is true. Vincent believes that it doesn’t matter which way he chooses as long as he does what he believes is right.
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