The Different Ways to See a Color

by Colin Canavan

“Colin move up to the center line!” my dad yelled. “Where did my dad think I was,” I wondered as I was in the first half of my soccer game. “Aren’t I on the line?” Finally I figured it out because I suddenly noticed a thin outline of an orange line in the grass. So I quickly moved up to it. I am colorblind, so when I see orange next to green it looks like green. Since the green fields at my soccer game were lined with orange, it all just looked like green.

Everyone who wonders about my colorblindness and knows that I am colorblind asks me, “What color is this?” or, “what color is that?” They expect that I cannot see the color they are asking because I am colorblind. When I answer their question correctly, they say, “You aren’t colorblind.” They do not understand that I can see colors but that I just see some different shades of colors.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->The angle and light can affect the way you see colors. I looked at a colorblind test from far away and I couldn’t see the picture that was supposed to be there. But, when I looked at it closely, I saw the picture. The test had a circle and a triangle in it and I could see the circle but not the triangle, until I looked at it closely. On the left test you are supposed to see a circle and an x and on the right you are supposed to see a circle and a triangle. If you are colorblind, the colors that you confuse are often very close. It might be that blue looks like purple, or one dark color and other dark colors look the same. But, bright and dark colors do not look the same!

If someone can’t see any color then they have no cones at all. <!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->Everyone has cells in their eyes called cones, which receive light. Without light your eyes cannot see any colors. A person who is not colorblind has three cones in their eye. A person who is colorblind but can see colors has one or two cones.

Since I am colorblind, I have learned to say the correct name of a color even when I don’t see it. For example, I see blue as purple, but I have learned what the color blue is. Everyone would say, “That color is blue, not purple.” After years of everyone saying that to me, I know to call it blue even when it looks purple to me. I still get confused sometimes and then say, “I really don’t know what color that is at all!”

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--> If you are colorblind, you can wear glasses or contact lenses that are tinted to help you tell the difference between colors. For example, if you see blue as purple they can make glasses that have a lighter color so you can tell the difference between the two colors. It might look goofy to wear these special colored glasses, so eye doctors recommend wearing contacts. I wouldn’t choose to wear these glasses.

I have always wondered what the right colors would look like. Unfortunately, I will never know. Maybe I could try the glasses once and see if they make the colors look how they are supposed to.

Since colorblindness is genetic, which means it is usually passed down through families. The males are usually the colorblind people in the family. If they have a girl, that girl usually passes it down to her son, in the form of a recessive gene, and so on. My Papa is colorblind and his grandfather was colorblind. I blame it on them for making me colorblind. My Papa is red-green colorblind which means he can’t tell the difference between red and green. My great-grandmother used to tell stories about how after school she would have to go help her father. He was a tailor and couldn’t tell what color thread would match the suit fabrics his customers had chosen to buy. She would go pick out the matching threads for him. Women can be colorblind, but very few are. In the U.S.A., 7% of men and 0.4% of females are colorblind.

Even though you weren’t born colorblind, beware, because you could become colorblind even though you aren’t now! You can develop colorblindness by taking certain medicines when you are old that contain chemicals that can make you colorblind. Another way to become colorblind is through injury.

Colorblindness can affect you in lots of different ways. One way it can affect you is in school, where lots of things rely on colors. If you are colorblind, it takes you longer to find the color you want in a crayon box. You might think brown crayons looks like red crayons, so you reach for the wrong color and have to look at the label to see if you are right. Colorblindness can also affect the job that you choose. You will not be able to enlist in some Military Forces, nor will you be able to work in railroad engineering or engineering that works with colored wires. I’m still wondering what jobs I can do in the future, and I am making a list of jobs that I can and can’t do.

If you ever want to test if you are colorblind, you can go online or take the <!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->colorblindness test at the Museum of Science. They usually have circles or blocks that have a number, letter, or shape inside and if you see it differently than normal people or you just see different color dots, YOU MIGHT BE COLORBLIND!!!

Before I looked at a colorblind test to see if I was colorblind, I was still coloring the sky purple. That was while I was in kindergarten. My mom grew suspicious and asked me the color of the sky that I had been coloring. I responded blue, because that was what I thought it was. Later, my mom remembered that her father is colorblind. She had been looking out for my two, older brothers when they were younger and had forgotten about it when she had me. Then, when my mom took me to the Museum of Science so I could take a colorblind test, I felt weird looking at one of the pictures. In the picture, I saw a different number than the rest of my family. That was the moment when we were sure I was colorblind.

Colorblindness is a funny genetic trait to have. Typically, the colorblind person is oblivious to the problem. It is usually brought to their attention by the people around them. I thought that two ties were green, and then my mom told me that one was orange. I also thought a room I was in was light blue until someone walked in and blurted out, “This room is my favorite color, purple!” Check your family tree. You might be colorblind and no one has told you yet.

Work Cited Page

Color Blindness Homepage." http:// colorvisiontesting.com. 20 Jan. 2011. Web.

"Color Blindness." www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/colordeficiency. 20 Jan. 2011. Web.

Rosenthal, Odeda, and Robert H. Phillips. Coping with Color Blindness. 1997. Print.

The World Book Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. 2007. p. 827. Print.