Yes, we have blue bananas! We have blue bananas today!

When I was a kid, one of the things I wanted most in the world was a birthday cake with blue frosting. My mother wouldn't give: blue was not an appropriate color for food other than blueberries. Even for birthday cakes. One of the highlights of my childhood - although one that made me a bit jealous and sad knowing that I would never, ever, ever in the whole wide world enjoy such an experience - was attending birthday parties for the Shepherd sisters - Maggie and Susie. I'm not sure which one had which colored party, but one of the girls had a pink frosted cake and pink dyed ginger ale; the other had a blue frosted cake and blue dyed ginger ale. I was completely in awe! Just insane!

My sisters have, over the years, made up for the lack of a blue frosting birthday cake, but it's not quite the same. 

I could never get enough blue. And, when it came to food, there just wasn't enough of it (other than those blueberries, which actually turned purple in a pie or muffin).

Oh, on our biannual trips to Chicago, my mother might buy a box of blue-glass hard candies, Michigan Mints, that were pretty good. But how long was a box of candy going to last in our house? Not long. 

And those gross sugar button candies had blue buttons.

Once in a blue moon, my mother would bring back a wedding favor: a mesh bag full of Jordan almonds, and there might be a blue one or two in the mix.

But where were the blue M&M's? Nowhere, at that time. Somewhere along the line, when I was an adult, Mars got rid of tan M&M's and brought in blue. Same goes for JELLO. There was no blue JELLO when I was a kid. There is now. Too little, too late. 

It wasn't just food, of course. I only wanted to wear blue clothing. This hasn't changed much: the majority of my clothing is probably some variant of blue. But I remember being heartbroken when McEachern's the Cobbler, where we got our annual pair of sneakers, didn't have blue PF Flyers in my size, so I had to settle for red. 

Having grown up in the era of hand me downs, I didn't have a lot of voice when it came to clothing color. Sure, I got some new outfits, but I also got a lot of what I got. And ain't no one who was buying blue for my older sister with the dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Who cared that I was a blue eyed towhead? 

One summer, we got really cute short sets: solid shorts and a red-yellow-blue-white large checked shirt. For some reason - probably size availability - Kath got the blue shorts, I got the red. Even though I was stuck with red shorts, I loved that outfit - which we called our "firecracker outfits" for some reason. Maybe we got them around the Fourth of July? And I knew that if I just hung on for a couple of years, those blue shorts would be mine!

My favorite songs on the radio were "I'm Mr. Blue" and "I Love You, I Love You, Said the Little Blue Man."

And at least there were blue flowers.

Ah, blue.

When my Uncle Jack got married, we trekked out to Chicago for the wedding. My very first. There, I was thrilled to find out that his bride, my soon-to-be Aunt Donna, was wearing a wedding gown that wasn't white, but was something called "ice blue." It - and she - were fairy-princess gorgeous. To be in the presence of such awesomeness was, well, awesome. 

But my desire for blue was often thwarted. It figures that the color jumper I wore throughout grammar school and high school was dark green, not the navy blue I longed for.

I was happy that my father had been in the Navy, which wore blue, and not the Army or the Marines with their gacky khaki.

When we moved around the corner from my grandmother's three-decker to a single family house of our own, I was hoping for blue wallpaper in the bedroom I'd be sharing with Kath. Nope: pink. My parents bedroom featured the same patterns: one wall in a quilted design, the others in floral. Only in blue. This was a mistake. I don't know what color she wanted - I'm guessing yellow, cream, or pale green - but she hated blue, announcing that "blue rooms are depressing." (No comment.) But she didn't have the builders change it out, and lived with that blue wallpaper for a good long time. I'm guessing that she was so eager to get out of my grandmother's and into digs of her own, that she would have been happy with bare walls.

But if blue rooms were depressing, why did this seem to also mean that there would be no blue foods? Just another example of life being unfair. 

And then the other day, I saw a reference to blue bananas that taste like ice cream.

Blue bananas that taste like ice cream? Now we're talking!

What I wouldn't have given for one of these as a kid. But maybe, just maybe, I could find them sometime, somewhere, at the grocery store. If they can carry starfruit and mangoes... 

My dreams were, of course, dashed when I found out that this picture has been somewhat colorized. That blue bananas are pale blue, and that, while they may taste like ice cream (or custard: opinions vary), when they ripen they turn - get this! - yellow.

Still, I will be on the lookout for them, and hope someday soon to hear the produce guy at Roche Brothers warbling "Yes, we have blue bananas. We have blue bananas today!"

And I will warble back, at least in my mind, "I love you, I love you, said the little blue man."