The second-hardest thing about being colorblind is trying to buy a bunch of bananas that don't taste like ass. A banana's gotta be pretty green — I mean, like, emerald-shamrock green — for me to be able to tell it's not yellow.
The hardest thing about being colorblind is trying to explain to people who aren't colorblind what it's like to be colorblind.
It's been estimated that as many as one out of every 12 males suffers some degree of colorblindness (the ratio is much, much lower in women, approximately one in 200). Which means there are a hell of a lot of guys out there who have a hard time discerning burnt sienna from ochre; it's a pretty common genetic defect.
But since nobody's walking around wearing a T-shirt that says "Kiss Me — I'm Colorblind" or driving a car with a bumper sticker that says "Ask Me About My Deuteranopia," most folks don't know who's colorblind and who isn't. It's generally one of those things that comes up incidentally after you've known someone for a while, when they refer to their obviously brown shirt as black, or when you finally find them in the mall parking lot after half an hour, standing next to the green Volkswagen they've mistaken for your blue one.
Every time someone finds out I'm colorblind, they want to know what it's like. Which is sort of like asking someone how it feels to have brown eyes or curly hair or a navel that sticks out as opposed to going in. It's just the way it is; I've got no basis for comparison. Still, I guess it's just rare enough to be weird, but not debilitating enough to be sad. So, since they can't ask the guy with the webs between his fingers what it's like to have webs between his fingers, they ask me what it's like to have trouble knowing where blue stops and gray begins.
They point at the grass, and ask me what color I think the grass is.
Ignoring the fact that I've been reading and hearing that grass is green since I was old enough to look and listen, I explain to them that that's not how it works, that I usually only have trouble in terms of contrast, and the shades between primary colors.
They nod, and make little thoughtful noises.
Then they point at the sky, and ask me what color I think the sky is.
I convince them that I think the sky is orange, then tell them that I'm only kidding, it's green, right? Like the grass.
They laugh, a trifle uncertainly, then marvel aloud at how strange it must be to go through life seeing only black and white, like a dog stuck in a Charlie Chaplin reel.
Setting aside that we established that I'm actually able to see colors two questions ago, I tell them that true and total colorblindness — the complete inability to see any color at all, known as monochromasy — is so rare it might as well not exist.
They digest this information. Then their own eyes brighten as they suddenly think of something else, and ask me how I can get away with driving a car if I don't know when the traffic lights are green or red.
I sigh loudly, and mumble something about knowing the difference between such bright and primary hues, and having gotten used to it a long time ago, and how the colors are always in the same position whether the fixtures are vertical or horizontal anyway.
At this point, the curious party invariably launches into a series of rapid-fire tests: "Quick! What color is that car?" "Does that one bush look different from that other bush?" "Is my hair the same color underneath as it is on top?" The number of these questions I will consecutively try to answer truthfully depends largely on how badly I want to have sex with the person asking them.
The interaction almost always ends with the curious party turning to someone else, and listing all the people he or she now knows who are colorblind. The someone else will mention a common friend left off of the curious party's list who is also colorblind, and I will usually avail myself of the opportunity to slink away while the curious party explains that he or she didn't know that so-and-so was colorblind.
I've been through this, no shit, at least 120 times since my freshman year of high school, when I came across a colorblindness test in my science textbook, and couldn't see the number "hidden" amid the circles of various shades of red and green.
Look, I'm not offended that so many people show such a frank interest in something that some might consider a disability. I don't think I have anything in common with someone who's paraplegic or autistic, or that I deserve a hang-tag for my car that'll let me park in the good spots, or that anyone who would ask me what it's like to be colorblind is some sort of boorish ghoul. I guess it might be marginally interesting to someone who's not, and believe me, if I thought the guy with the webs between his fingers would be cool about it, I'd certainly ask him what's up with those webs.
I'm just a little sick of having the exact same conversation over and over, and I suspect most other colorblind folks are, as well. So if you're at some social function and you overhear someone asking someone else what color they think the carpet is, please, wander over and ask the beleaguered party whether their colorblindness is protanomalous or deuteranomalous, or how they discovered their colorblindness, or if they have a colorblind parent.
And if the beleaguered party happens to have webbed fingers, try to steer the conversation in that direction, and let me know what you find out.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2006.