blue-outgate 2009

What follows is a sad but ultimately inspiring tale of doubt, persecution, and eventual triumph. There are moments in every life when pure, soul-driven truth must take precedence over all: over the deafening roar of the unbelieving many, over the agony of friendships teetering on the edge of survival, over the small yet persistent voice inside oneself that begs to know:

Did I for real just totally make up blue-out?

Our story begins late last week. I was filling out a form for Dalton, which is an almost daily demand of my current job. As fate would have it, this form was printed on paper of the prettiest cornflower blue. How delightful!, I thought, How different! I was perhaps too distracted by the novelty of the stationary, and the next thing I knew I had committed a foul error, marring the very face of the parchment I had so innocently admired!

This simply would not do. I had to rectify this mistake. I dialed a co-worker.

"Hey, Paula." I greeted one of our front-desk workers. "Do we have any blue-out?"
Thus began what would come to be the most trying and harrowing experience of my young life.

Paula said in a weird voice that she didn't think we had any. I wandered up front, thinking maybe I would rummage around in the supply cabinet to see if we had any blue-out.

"What's up, Dom?" I gave another co-worker a friendly greeting. "Say, do we have any blue-out?"

"Do we have any what?"

"Blue-out. You know, like if you make a mistake on a sheet of blue paper."

"No such thing."

I always just assumed that blue-out was, you know, a thing. I could have sworn I'd come across it before, and assumed one of my remaining colleagues would back me up on that.

"Yeah, I don't think so," said Jamie. "No way, that does not exist," insisted Kim. The lunch delivery guy, a tenured professor, a random grad student. NONE had ever heard of blue-out.

These moments are the stuff self-identity is made of. I am not right very often, but I knew I was right about this. I instructed Lisa, my student worker to google blue-out and send me the results of her research.

There is such a thing as blue-out.

And green-out, and pink-out. And yellow-out.

I'm not angry at my doubtful friends. I'm not bitter or spiteful. I take solace in knowing the notions of my heart rang true.

And that if I need to correct an inked error on ANY kind of paper, modern technology allows me to do so.