Color Blindness

      Whose car is it?  Johnson’s?  Elliot’s?  Eccleston’s?  They all had ’56 Chevrolets, two toned in the familiar white-topped, white fender manner.

     The cars were either red or green.  I could never tell the difference from a distance.  Closer and in the right light, I could sometimes see which was which.  Brother Dave bought Elliot’s.  He had had it for a while before one morning as the sun struck it just right, I realized it was green, not red.

     The evidence of my color-blindness appeared early, but everybody ignored it.  I remember Cousin Jon scoring big by identifying colors in a plaid shirt.  I sat beside him and failed miserably at the task.  I thought it was because I had never learned my colors.

      I remember Dad remarking about the newly planted green wheat growing up in the rows west of the house, how pretty it was in the sun above the western horizon.  Except it looked red to me.

      The most memorable moment was in second grade, maybe around Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Miss Ebendorf handed out the 81/2 by 11 sheets of paper with the blue outline of a deer, still smelling pleasantly of duplicator fluid.  We dug out our crayons and colored inside the lines, but when she paper clipped the pictures to the wire strung across the front of the room, she made a comment about my green deer.       

     It caught me quite by surprise, but as I looked, sure enough, my deer wasn’t the same color as everybody else’s.  I chose a green crayon to flesh out my deer.  It looked fine to me, but it was different.  I took a lot of ribbing about that. It would be years before I thought I should have told them it was a John Deere.  I never cared much for art after that.

     In freshman biology, in the chapter about eyes, there was a glossy colored page full of colored dots.  I could see two words in the pattern, a faded “color” and a little brighter “onion”.  Still I never suspected the truth, that I didn’t see colors the same way other folks did.

     Finally, in chemistry class a year or so later, my lab partner Jake and I got into a terrible argument.  What color was the residue in the test tube?  Jake said purple.  No way.  We resorted to the judge, Mr. Hare.  Jake told him it was purple.  He asked me what color I thought it was.  I said it was a brownish color.  Mr. Hare looked at met, shook his head, smiled, never said a word as he turned to help other students.  So who was right? 

      Reluctantly, I had to concede the argument.  That’s purple?  I couldn’t believe it.  Over the years, I have come to realize there is no purple in my palette.  It’s either red or blue, or sometimes a yucky brown.  Anyway, I had come to the conclusion that I couldn’t trust my judgment when it comes to color.

     Color blindness, besides being a nuisance, also causes some legal problems When I was earning my pilot’s license, I passed all the tests with flying colors (maybe not), but one, the physical, because of the color test.

     “We” tried to cheat.  Good old Uncle Bill used his influence with some nurses to procure a book with the color charts in them.  I tried to study them and see what I was supposed to see, but it was no good.  The FAA color charts were different.  

    My physical certificate said right on it, “Not valid for night flying or light gun signal control.”  I understood the signal gun.  You have to be able to distinguish red, green, and white.  Interestingly enough, it wasn’t the red—green issue that was the problem.  It was a white—green issue, as I would come to find out.

     But why night flying?  Pretty much black and white, I thought.  I could appeal, so I did.   I went to Jeffco airport where a FAA guy took me out to where we could see the control tower.  During a lull in the action of takeoffs and landings, a controller aimed a light signal gun at us.  (Signal guns are used in case of avionics failure, or if radio silence is in effect, or if a radioless aircraft —like an old airplane with no electrical system—needs to land at an airport operated by a control tower.)

     I was able to see the red, but I couldn’t tell the difference between the green and white.  I failed.  Restrictions remain.  I could wait month and try again, the FAA guy said.  I could pass that light gun test the second time around I was sure, but it wasn’t a big deal and I never went back.

     The white—green is also a problem with stoplights at night.  I have no problem with the red light.  I see it, it’s bigger (or seems so), it’s usually the top of the three lights.  I don’t see the green among all the streetlights and signs.  The yellow light usually catches me by surprise at night.

      So it was when I went to trade in my Kansas CDL (Commercial Driver’s License) for a Colorado one, I had to take a CDOT physical.  I was doing fine until the color chart on the visual section rolled around.  The physical came to a screeching halt.  I had to have an optometrist certify I was safe to drive with my “impairment.”

      This could have been expensive, but only a week or two before I had purchased new glasses from Visionworks.  I went back and spelled out my problem to the optometrist who had examined my eyes.  She wasn’t exactly sure what to do, but promised me she would find out and let me know.  Since I had just been there, there was no charge.

      She sent me a copy of a letter she had written and sent to the clinic doing my physical.  I went back to the clinic and got my CDOT physical, which I then had to take to the Driver’s License examiner, who processed it all and I was good to go, after about a two-week delay all caused by colorblindness.  Harrumph!

     An interesting sidelight, 3-D images don’t work for me.  I see flat images with shadow lines.  Maybe that’s why colorblind folks aren’t fooled by camouflage and make good spotters.

      Perhaps the most frequent problem is the matter of dress.  Combinations that don’t bother me at all sometimes astound the females in my life.  When I was teaching school, I underwent a dress inspection every morning before I left for work.

      How many times have I participated in a conversation, “What shirt do I wear with these pants?”

     “Oh, anything,” followed by “You can’t wear that!” when I come out of the bedroom.    

      Left to my own devices, I choose black and white, generic, or gray trousers and a wild shirt.  If people look strangely at me, I try not to let the girls know what I wore to this or that place.  What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

      In the meantime, I won’t make a very good witness to a crime.  “What color was the getaway car?”

     “Well, it might have been green, or it could have been red.”