My favorite color used to be blue. I absolutely loved the color. I had blue clothes, blue nails, a blue room, and a lot of other blue stuff. What’s not to love about the color?

One day in the spring, my parents were outside doing some yard work. I was about five or six years old; my sister was about twelve or thirteen. We decided that we were going to make our parents a delicious cake. There wasn’t a special occasion or anything, we just wanted to make them one “just because.”

My mom has a whole bookcase full of just cookbooks. I had remembered that my mom particularly loved this one amazing chocolate cake recipe. My sister and I decided that we were going to make them that cake. Conveniently, they both liked the color blue. We were going to make them a blue cake!

I grabbed the cookbook and turned to the page with the cake on it. We got out all the necessary ingredients and laid them all out on the counter. After we began to mix the ingredients, my sister realized that the recipe wasn’t the right one. Frustrated, she flipped to the correct recipe and we began all over again.

My sister found a small bottle half-full of blue food coloring. She told me to put it in the vanilla frosting so we could have blue frosting for the cake. She went outside to try distracting our parents. I felt proud that my sister trusted me to do something all by myself. I put the blue in the frosting and mixed it.
Then, I realized that the only thing that could be better than a chocolate cake with blue frosting was a blue chocolate cake with blue frosting. I got a stool and found another small bottle in the cabinet. I put a little of the blue into the batter and mixed it. It didn’t turn the cake very blue, so I mixed more in. I kept adding blue until I was satisfied with the color. My sister came back in and we set the cake in the oven. By the time our parents came in, we had let the cake cool and then frosted it.
We yelled “SURPRISE!!!!” and our parents froze when they saw the extremely blue cake. Dad started laughing so hard that tears were just streaming down his face. Mom was speechless; she didn’t know what to say. I was confused as to why Dad was laughing so hard.
I asked him what was so funny and he asked how much blue food coloring I had put into the cake. I told him (very proudly) that I put half of one bottle in the frosting, and then I put another full bottle in the batter.
“Yeah, I can definitely see that. Tell you what. You and your sister can have the cake. Dad and I appreciate it, but we just don’t feel like having any.” So my sister and I ate two slices each.
Later, I had to go to the bathroom. I was in there for a while, so my mom came in. “Is everything okay, Steph?” she asked.
“No, everything is not okay. I’m dying!” I bawled.
“Well, what makes you think you’re dying?” she questioned.
“I went Number Two and it came out all blue!”
My mom started laughing just as hard as my dad had earlier. She said that I wasn’t dying. She told me to open my mouth and look in the mirror, so I did. “Your poop is blue for the same reason that your mouth is. All that food coloring just dyed it blue.”
“Whew! That was close!!”