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Unit 4: Color Blindness

“That sure is a nice blue shirt you’re wearing,” Eric commented to his classmate.

“Thanks for the compliment, but it’s not blue.” the boy responded. “It’s green.”

“Well it sure looks blue to me,” Eric insisted and then called on his good friend to back him up. “What do you think, Charles? Is it blue or green?”

“Uh.” Charles paused for a moment as if he thought about actually lying just for Eric’s sake, but then said, “Sorry pal, I’m going to have to say it’s green.”

Eric’s jaw dropped to the ground. Not only had he been proven wrong, but he had also been betrayed by a good friend.

“I think there is something wrong with both your guys’ eyes,” Eric said out of spite and then stormed out of the classroom.

Eric sat motionless on the hallway floor with his back against his locker. What if they are right, he thought. What if it really was green? He began to worry that something might in fact be wrong with his eyes. And if there was, he wanted to know right away, so he went to the school nurse’s office.

“Can I help you, son?” the kind nurse asked.

“I think there is something wrong with my eyes,” Eric stated. “Green appears blue to me.”

“That’s nothing to worry about,” the nurse told him. “In fact it is very, very common among males to be unable to differentiate between certain colors. It’s called a blue-green deficiency.”

“A what?” Eric asked.

“It’s a mild form of colorblindness, but let’s check you out before we get too far ahead of ourselves,” she advised him.

The nurse laid several cards on the table. On each card were many small colored dots making up a larger circle. Within the circle was a hidden number or letter, but what you see depends on your eyes. For example, one person might see a letter b on a card while someone who is colorblind might see the number 7, or something like that. It all depends on how the individual’s eyes process different shades of color.

Eric studied the cards carefully one at a time and told the nurse what letter or number he saw. She recorded his answers on a form and, after he’d finished, she determined the results of the test according to what Eric saw. 

“It’s just as I thought,” she said. “You have a slight blue-green deficiency.”

“My god,” Eric screamed in despair. “I’m color blind!”

“You’re not ‘colorblind’.” She patted him on the back in a consoling way and told him, “Remember, many people are just like you and a lot of them don’t even know it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I guess you’re right,” he agreed. “And who cares whether a shirt is blue or green anyway.”

Eric went on to live a long fruitful life in spite of his “handicap”. Being colorblind made little impact on his life whatsoever. Occasionally he would mistake one color for another, but it was never enough to be of any relevance. Besides, colors are just man-given labels and, in the larger scheme of things, they mean little.