By Lucas Hauser | Staff Writer
The elementary school carpool had carried on amicably for months at this point, with the five scholars in the back of the minivan (myself included) discussing the issues of the day: what was packed in our lunchboxes, who was your favorite chipmunk from “Alvin and the Chipmunks” (this was 2008, okay?), and the construction and melting of our recess snow forts (many Midwesterners can relate). Although hardly old enough to button our own coats, we held the basic maturity to avoid major arguments and talk about agreeable topics—like matchbox cars, Webkinz (remember the time period), and fart jokes.
This fateful March day, one of the neighbors made the fateful choice to carry a pad of paper in her hand instead of keeping it in her bag. Ordinarily, this would not even be worth noticing, and our quarter-mile ride would come and go in peace. In the course of the conversation, it somehow drifted to the exposed object before us, and I made the crucial mistake of describing it with a color.
I still remember that pad of paper to this day. My eyes told me that it was green. Logically, I mentioned that the paper was green. That did not go over well with the others in the backseat. Armed with my twin brother on my side, the debate roared as to the color of this pad of paper. “It’s yellow!” the others insisted. Although they made some good points, I wasn’t convinced.
My mom, who had been driving, stopped at the curve where we were to be dropped off and weighed in. She said that I wasn’t seeing things right and mentioned something about my grandfather (I would later learn that colorblindness is genetic and carried on the X-chromosome). And that’s when I discovered for the first time and truly understood that I was colorblind.
Colorblindness, also known as color vision deficiency, is the decreased ability to see color or differences in color. There are many different types, but the bottom line is that most people who are colorblind, like me, can see color. Achromatopsia, or total colorblindness (seeing everything in black and white), is extremely rare and not to be confused with the more common forms. The main thing to understand is that, for most people, their perception of color is wrong but not absent. While I struggle to differentiate blue from purple or red from green (which, funnily enough, is my favorite color), I still can see all those colors.
It’s always fun to run through the thought exercise with others about how we perceive the world. Are we all seeing the same colors, or do we all just adopt the same names for them? Is my red really your blue? There is no exact scientific consensus, so I can’t red pill you here. For those of you uncomfortable with that uncertainty, I can provide you some security in knowing that people with my affliction are definitively wrong in our perceptions.
Over the years I’ve revealed to some people that my rods and cones aren’t all right. If I share this neat little factoid about myself to someone else, without fail, the reaction is to reflexively act “What color is my shirt?” Then they work their way around with other people’s clothes and objects in the room. The consistency with which I encounter this response leads me to believe that it is entirely involuntary and somehow genetically coded within every human’s DNA.
I have taken those tests with the dots and such where you try to find the numbers or shapes. My first memory of that dates back to elementary school, where all students were given these vision tests and I had extreme difficulty finding any patterns in the colorful dots before me (not like the Logan Paul video about color vision glasses, which is unsurprisingly confirmed to be a hoax). Since then I have taken similar tests online. Initially, I did them out of curiosity, but later it was at the demand of normal-vision friends who find entertainment in watching my excruciating struggle to not be able to see the numbers hidden in the patterns which are so patently obvious to them. From that, I’ve learned that I have moderate deuteranomaly, which is red-green colorblindness, and that I make an interesting test subject for others to observe.
In all seriousness, colorblindness has no debilitating implications for one’s daily life. The major downsides are being excluded from working as a pilot, and greater difficulty understanding and creating colorful artwork and fashion that is appealing to the eye. Now is when I need to give a big shout-out to the CEO of Crayola, because those labels which indicate the colors of crayons, colored pencils, and markers are complete lifesavers! Without them, I’d be lost and digging through the pile of options, hopelessly inept at choosing or even identifying the color I needed.
But the effects were not contained to art projects in my brick-colored (that’s as far as I feel that I can safely go in this characterization) elementary school. Choosing what to wear every day in the morning can also be a task fraught with potential for disaster if you’re not careful.
I’d like to make a disclaimer here. I am not entirely blaming my lack of fashion knowledge on my dysfunctional rods and cones. Severe disinterest and general ignorance are also contributing factors. With that said, I’d like to offer a few colorblind fashion tips that I have learned the hard way.
Let’s start with some basic principles. The concept of matching is a myth. A theoretical construct of society superimposed over a visual reality upon which it has no bearing. I will blame this one on my inability to correctly perceive color, but the concept seems arbitrary and foreign. If you are like me and allot less than three minutes per day to these types of decisions, I have a handy-dandy rule that will make this factor irrelevant. Here it is: if your pants and shirt are not literally the same color, you’ll be fine. Some strive for better than “fine.” In most cases, I don’t.
Shopping is perhaps more difficult than the daily ritual of dressing yourself. That is why I spend as little time doing so as possible. This one is probably more a victim of apathy than substandard color interpretation and differentiation. However, I would argue that my antipathy stems from the discomfort and confusion that comes with attempting to make these decisions when money is on the line. Rule of thumb here: Pictures you see on screens don’t match reality. Therefore, buy it at Costco. They’re affordable and have a great return policy if you mess up. If not, now you have 15 of that product! Alternatively, if you prefer online shopping, use www.costco.com.
On a side note, shopping while colorblind also comes with the added fun of trying to determine which fruits are ripe enough. Without the aid of other senses, such as touch, this evaluation is often poor. And even when you’ve brought the produce home, you still have to be able to see when it’s ready to eat. This would be a less regular occurrence if bananas weren’t my favorite fruit. The green-yellow spectrum strikes again!
To further go down this rabbit hole, shopping for paint is quite the task. Unlike the saints at Crayola, Benjamin Moore and others have not adopted helpful color-naming systems. For someone who has limited visual tools to differentiate the exact nuances of paint colors, how does calling them things like “On the Rocks,” “Showtime,” “Babouche,” or “Donald Kaufman” help me understand what I’m getting into? I suspect you don’t need deficient rods and cones to sympathize. We need change, and we need it fast.
Additionally, if you are like me and prefer a basic formula to build from, jeans and sweatshirts can go with/over basically everything, making them viable options for most informal winter arrangements. Will you have a meaningful style? Probably not. Are you likely to make a terrible mistake? Probably not.
Simple bottoms are the key to success. Stick with jeans, khaki, or black pants. Don’t get cute with navy and think that you can tell what color that really is. The high-risk black or navy debate within your head can rage for hours if you let it, and it’s not even worth bothering. Avoid that at all costs.
In those instances where you wear a belt, make sure to have a reversible black/brown belt. Those which only can display just one color are inherently less versatile and quite unhelpful. Why would you intentionally limit yourself in this way? Why would you put all your eggs in one basket? It is unquestionably valuable to be able to make corrections on the fly.
An area where you can’t provide yourself this luxury of easy adjustment after the fact: the road. “How can you know when to stop at a traffic light?” you might ask. My early years of intense observation on my surroundings while in the backseat of the car allowed me to commit this sequence to memory. But it still isn’t quite right. The red looks fine, although the yellow light appears rather orange, and the green light seems more like white. Under normal circumstances, this is absolutely no problem. However, some cities have horizontal traffic lights, which I can only imagine are confusing to all drivers, regardless of your color differentiation ability. Perhaps the cruelest is the stoplight in Tipperary Hill, New York, which is reordered to have green and red switched. Ostensibly, the light is supposed to honor the Irish heritage of the neighborhood. I say it’s a devious plot to trap color vision-deficient drivers into more traffic tickets.
Lastly, for those who are still not confident in my model for fashion decisions, I will provide you with some solace. Around 9% of men and .5% of women are colorblind. Hence, for a small but still sizable portion of the population, they will be physically limited in their ability to judge you. Also remember that a bunch of people don’t care, too. If you’re trying and cognizant of your decisions, you’re already one step ahead.
While it is faint, I can make out the number 21 above.
Tipperary Hill Traffic Light