When Real Life and Color Blindness Collide

I did not plan on having my second post be about a disability.  I didn’t even think I had another disability to write about.  I was wrong.  At least this disability is not mine.

I was reading a blog post at But You’re a Girl by Adria Richards about color blind web designers and her post brought back humorous memories of real life and color deficiency colliding.  My husband and five sons all have varying degrees of color deficiency.

First, I’d like to get the technical jargon out of the way.  When most people use the term color blind, they are usually referring to color vision deficiency. Most people with color deficiency can see colors, but they have difficulty differentiating between shades of reds and greens or blues and yellows.  It is very rare, but people who are totally color blind can only see things as black and white or in shades of gray and is called achromatopsia.  For my purposes, I will use the familiar term color blindness for color deficiency.

I met my husband when I was sixteen years old.  It really was infatuation at first sight and has continued for the last 35 years.  Yes, I am half-a-century old.  Anyway, he was always quite well dressed, but there was this one time…  I vividly remember sitting outside his house while he went and did a quick change of clothes.  Out he comes, bounding down the steps in a pink velour shirt and khaki-green pants.  I looked at him and thought, what the hell?  Not having dated all that long, I didn’t actually say that.  However, there must have been an odd look on my face because he asked me what was wrong.  I asked him why he was wearing a pink shirt with green pants (in 1977 young men really didn’t wear pink).  He said he thought his shirt was green.  I said, nope.  He then told me he was color blind.  Needless to say, he went and changed again.  I have been his color coordinator ever since.

I can’t remember the exact situation when I realized my first son, John, was color blind, but my antenna was up with the rest of the boys.  When they all started school, I would remind each teacher of this. They all went to a close-knit, neighborhood Catholic school where teachers knew families by name.  When John was in 8th grade the school had a new art teacher.  By this time, though, I had forgot to mention to her John’s condition.  One evening I received a telephone call from her and she just starts profusely apologizing for hollering at John.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  She proceeds to tell me of the art project that week where students had to do a chalk drawing of a classmate.  John had drawn a girl and given her a green face!  She then hollered at him for being cruel and gave him an F.  Later she was retelling this incident to fellow teachers when they informed her he was color blind and probably didn’t realize it.  Thus, the phone call to me.  I laughed and told her not to worry about it, as I should have told her in the first place.  When I asked John about it, he told me he had asked someone if the chalk was pink since it had no wrapper (they were taught to always read the color on the wrapper).  The male classmate had said yes.  John had no idea it was green until the teacher blew up.   We all had a good laugh.  She also changed his grade to an A-.

My second son, David, has a few colorful incidents.  David had drawn a bookmark for a school project with colored pencils. When he went to color the main character, a mouse, the names on the pencils were unusual ones he didn’t recognize and ended up coloring the mouse–what else–green!  We were able to cover up the green with brown so it just looked multi-colored and quite nice.  I will also never forget the time he asked me why the Minnesota Vikings were called the Purple People Eaters when the team colors were blue!  Boy, did we have a laugh at that one.  None of the boys can see purple.

My third son, Matthew, experienced his first color drama in first grade.  He had a math test where you had to count different colors of fish.  Obviously, he got some of those problems wrong.  When he showed me his paper he asked why the problems were marked wrong.  When I told him the teacher forgot he couldn’t see the different colors, he didn’t want me to say anything.  It never happened again, as Matthew always made sure he knew what the colors were!

My fourth and fifth sons, Stephen and Bo, had the same experiences with the same teacher.  It was first grade again, this time with Sister Joan.  When I told her Stephen was color blind, she seemed understanding and indicated she would make a note of it.  Well, I guess she meant she would make notice of it as she stood in front of the whole class and said that even though Stephen had a handicap of color blindness, he should be treated just like everyone else.  Consequently, after the first day of school Stephen came home hopping mad and said he hated Sister Joan!

The next year when Bo gets her for first grade, I tell her he has just a slight degree of color blindness, hoping nothing will be made of it.   Unfortunately, that year there was also a girl who was hearing-impaired, and Sister Joan decides to speak of both their handicaps to the whole class because, you know, there is comfort in numbers. Needless to say, Bo came home and informed me he  hated Sister Joan!  We reminisce and laugh.

The boys are now in their late teens and early twenties, but every so often one of them still makes a fashion color faux pas or my husband buys a god-awful color of paint and we all laugh.

Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.

–Bob Newhart