It's What Colour?

I always felt so badly for Michael because he is colour-blind. As a painter, I appreciated the extraordinary array of colours that exist, and felt guilty that he misses out on that (the gene for colour blindness passes down through the mother). As a little boy, Michael would get excited when the leaves on the trees turned from green to yellow because yellow is one colour he can see accurately. I would put myself in his shoes by trying to imagine a colour that I'd never seen before - try it - it's not easy. So how could I possibly describe red, green, gold, pink, orange, or turquoise to him? He assured me that it really didn't matter because he couldn't miss what he'd never seen. I got a taste of what he meant recently when I began tutoring for Links To Learning: As the administrator showed me around she said I could set up at one of the green tables. I looked at the room full of gray tables and asked, "Which ones?" "The green ones," she replied. I felt like an idiot as I slowly said,"I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean." She looked at me for a minute, and then it dawned on me. "What colour are those tables?" I asked. "Green, "she said kindly. "What colour do you think they look like?" Now I know from being tested that I've lost some colour vision on the low end of the spectrum. And I sometimes have to ask Stan if something is blue or purple. However, now I'm wondering how often I get the colour wrong and don't know it. But like Michael said, it doesn't matter - I can't miss what I don't see.