Origin Story

Every superhero has an origin story and although I’m not a superhero (and neither is Batman but that’s for another post) I feel it’s time to share how I became youintheblue. I’ve had a few online identities that reflected the kinds of work I wanted to present but I came to the conclusion that everything I do should be in the same place regardless of whether others considered it spiritual or secular (or nonsense).

I filled a couple of pages with names I liked and tested them out to see if they were available. Most of the ones I liked were already taken; basically anything using a colour, a mustelid or any kind of monkey was used by someone else – which oddly restored my faith in humanity.

It was around this time that my best mate came for a visit. He’s from California where he works in youth theatre and visits local schools as a storyteller. He’s a brilliant communicator, writer and creative. Obviously, I asked him to tell one of his stories – The Man with Two Hands – to the children at a school I was working with at the time. He agreed.

It’s important to say at this point that students at regular schools in California don’t wear uniforms (I’ll supress the rant about uniforms and conformity for another time) so my friend was quite surprised to find around 200 children, all dressed in blue uniforms, staring up at him as he took to the stage.

The story went down a storm, the children loved it, the staff loved it, so there was time for a bit of Q&A. Each time a hand shot up to ask a question, my friend would say, “yes, you in the blue”. The children never quite got why the staff were laughing but it was a great moment which led to me taking on the identity – youintheblue.