We all have our idiosyncrasies - right? Take him, for instance. He couldn't eat a peanut M and M without knowing what color it was.
He could not understand how some people would throw a whole handful into their mouths without so much as a glance. The thought of it horrified him. You had to eat them one at a time and savor their uniqueness. Orange ones, for instance. People argued with him when he said they had an orange flavor, but he knew there was an orange flavor there. Very delicate, true, but still definitely there if you knew to look for it. You had to suck them very gently, because the flavor was in the candy coating. You had to catch the flavor without disturbing the chocolate underneath, because the heavy, earthy chocolate flavor overwhelmed everything in its path. Except the peanut taste, of course.
It was a skill that he had mastered. The blue ones were special in a different way. You had to guard yourself when you ate them because they had powers. You had to protect yourself from the blue ones, because they could bring the sky right into your head.
It was the yellow ones that bothered him because in all truth he could not detect any lemon flavor at all. He tried and tried but he could not identify the slightest whiff of lemon.
He began to doubt himself. Perhaps the others were right and there was no orange flavor in the orange M and Ms, no raspberry in the red ones - no coffee in the brown ones. Perhaps he was wrong about the powers of the seductively turquoise ones, glowing irrationally in the yellow plastic bag.
It was on the bus one Thursday morning that he solved the problem. He'd overslept and not even had time for coffee though he did brush his teeth. Now he popped a yellow M and M in his mouth and realized his error.
``Banana!'' he cried out loud to the other bus riders.
``Not lemon. The yellow ones have a banana flavor!''
``You just found that out?'' the driver said.