Do you know someone who is color blind? My father and my son are color blind, and it makes for some interesting situations. The way I understand it is men are more likely to be color blind than women, and mother’s typically pass it along to their sons, but not their daughters.
My dad and his three brother’s were all color blind, his two sisters were not. One of his sister’s (my aunt) passed it along to her two sons. The other sister had only daughters, and neither one is color blind. I passed it down to my son (who vehemently denied that he was color blind until he was about 10 years old). He had done the test for color blindness (Ishihara Color Test) at the doctor’s office, but of course the doctors were wrong.
Photo courtesy of Toledo Bend (toledo-bend.com/)
People who are color blind (in my experience), do not like to admit it to anyone! My father was a classic case. We knew he was color blind, he knew he was, but he wouldn’t tell anyone else. Bless his heart, my mother would try to tell him when his clothes weren’t matching, but he insisted that they matched perfectly!
The stolen van
Back in the 80’s, he was working in Los Angeles for a few months. He had a Chevy van, and one night it was stolen. He reported it to the police, describing it as a brown Chevy van. A few days later, the police called and said, “Sir, we found a van that matches the description of yours, but it is Green”. It was then and only then that my dad admitted that his van might be green. Sure enough, it was his van. It was trashed unfortunately, so he never got it back. Luckily the next van he bought was white.
The green cat
About six years ago, mom and dad were sitting at their kitchen table which looked out on the backyard. He was staring out the window and said to my mom, “I never realized how much Samantha matches the grass!”. Samantha was their orange cat. Yeah. Mom and I didn’t know if the grass looked orange to him, or if the cat looked green. We just smiled and nodded.
Samantha
When we would play family games, we often forgot about him being color blind. Any game that had colored pieces was a challenge for him. Home improvement was always fun as well. I remembered we argued over the color that the roof should be. He had picked something that did not match the rest of the house at all. Finally he gave in and let mom choose.
In his later years, dad would laugh about being color blind – laugh hysterically actually, when he knew he had screwed something up, or when he was just screwing with us!
Do you know anyone that is color blind? Do you have any interesting experiences with it?
Tammy
Those stories are so funny! I can remember my dad coming out after getting dressed and he would not match at all…we would just laugh! We just found out Brad is now colorblind. So…I too, passed it down to our son! Oops! 🙂
Jennifer-admin
You certainly did – oopsie! Isn’t that weird that it’s passed to the boys from their mother? You are very familiar with my stories I’m sure, if your dad was color blind too. – especially the clothing 🙂
Jennifer Quillen
I have never met anyone that was color blind, but I can imagine it would be quite challenging!
Kelsie Harris
The story about the green cat is very funny. From what I have heard, people who are color blind can distinguish colors based on the different shades of grey that they can tell apart and therefor recognize that this is the color that people consider purple, etc. I have no idea if that is actually true or not.
Jen-Eighty MPH Mom
Hahahaha…that is funny! Those kinds of things happened with my dad all the time. We would totally not even think about him being color blind.
That is so interesting how Tobei could see colors again! I’m sure the world looked “bright” to him after all of that time without seeing vivid colors!
Liz @ A Nut in a Nutshell
My ex is color blind, and he does surprisingly well. After one particularly horrendous clothing experience at work, he has become much more careful, and he’ll just ask for help. I suspect that’s why he just likes to wear white shirts a lot. 😉 My son didn’t inherit that gene, and I’m going to be so interested in seeing whether my daughter is a carrier and if her future sons will be color blind.
Eileen
It is funny people dont want to admit this about themselves. When I was working in eyecare I believe the percentage of men were 8% and women much, much less. So really, its not like you can help it or do anything about it. We were also taught to tell people they were color deficient, to less the blow some when we tested them. Some people would freak out .
My husband cant tell the diff between black and blue, and other subtle differences. But nothing mixed up too badly. I had to chuckle at your stories. Funny!
Linda Ramos
How interesting that it is passed to boys through the mother. Just sounds so odd! I guess we learn things every day. It is great that your dad can laugh at these things now.
Betty Baez
lol! that’s a good story, I actually dated a guy who was color blind and i kind of feel bad that i asked him one day why he always looked like he got dressed in the dark my exact words where “what are you color blind” and that’s how i found out..poor thing lol
Jennifer-admin
Oh oops!!
Robin Quick
My son is colorblind. he has a hard time distinguishing between similar colors. He will argue that a dark blue car us black or a green car is blue. Sometimes I find myself arguing with him then I realize to him the blue car IS black! LOL
Robin Quick
BTW… I passed colorblindness down to my son from my dad too.
ANN*
What a funny story. We had a friend who was colored blind so we always helped him out
when ever we could . One thing tho we always knew what color of car he was going to buy .
He always had a red car .