True Colors

There's so much you can learn from children's encyclopedias. Or perhaps, I'm really more ignorant than I thought.

I was reading to LP one evening and the topic we I thumbed through was about vision. There was a small part there about color-blindness, and some pictures of dots that will determine normal vision or colorblindness.

LP looked at the first picture and said, "23".

Huh? I asked.

"There, I can see the number 23."

Where?

"There, can't you see it?" she replied, tracing the number 23 with her finger on the picture.

"Er, no," I replied. "You're pulling my leg." As mother to a perennially rambunctious, and imaginative seven-year-old, I vowed never to fall prey to her practical jokes.

There was another picture on the next page. Barely had my lips moved to ask what she saw in the dots when she blurted, "A sailboat."

What sailboat? I asked.

"There, mom," and she traces yet again another sailboat on the dots with her finger.

I decided to call in a responsible adult, Andolini. He had been fixing the ceiling in the other room and was not privy to what almost became a frustrating verbal tussle.

"Twenty-three," he points to the first picture. "Can't you see it?"

I scratched my head.

"And there's a sailboat," he goes on. LP giggles.

"Mom's colorblind!" she shouts with glee.

I felt...blind. Like I deserved the parking slots nearest the mall entrance.

The following day at the office, I Google-searched color blindness.

From this site, the following pics showed themselves.


Well, you're supposed to see a square, a circle, and a star. Everyone's supposed to see that, colorblind or not.

Next pic:

Try to find a circle, star and/or square within 3 seconds:


I found a square right away. But no star nor square. Surprise, surprise, colorblind folks will only be able to see a square. "Normal" people should see it, too, along with a faint brown circle. (Duh.)

Another pic:

See the boat? Damn! I only see dots!

I figured a second opinion of sorts (denial being the first phase of depression) was needed, so I checked out this other site.

This was the third pic, and I was happy to see the number 70.


Until I read that if you're colorblind, that's exactly what you should see. "Normal" people, like the rest of my colleagues in the office, should see 29.

On the last pic, the number 5 was completely clear to me. Can't you see it? It's so...VISIBLE.


To us colorblind folk, anyway. If you have my daughter's perfect vision, you'll only see a meaningless scatter of dots.

So not only am I nearsighted and astigmatic, I'm also colorblind. May I add, though, that it's not at all like I can't tell the colors of the stoplight, nor what color blouse I'm wearing now (red, FYI), nor that I wonder as to why they call it the White House. It just means I can't fly planes nor be an astronaut. Shucks. That seriously limits my career options.

Although that does explain why I wore green to an Ateneo-La Salle basketball game many, many years ago. I swore I was wearing blue. My friends insisted it was green. And so did the people we asked on the street. And the rest of the fans in the bleachers.