…and I’m not just talking about the inability to distinguish red from green well. I think I also have some other color perception problems, but my eye doctor doesn’t have the tests I need to find out for sure.
I can’t get a job in forensics, medicine, paramedic, firefighting, law enforcement, and many cushy government jobs because of the stupid color vision requirement (Government’s afraid my inability to perceive color well may be used to drive a frivilous lawsuit and cost the damn state/country millions of dollars) Man am I pissed: all the jobs I’ve ever found interesting are out of reach for me.
All the inconvience of a disability, with no benefits. Being colorblind has no advantages (excluding superior nightvision compared to normal sighted people, but my being on Accutane twice quickly removed that benefit.) Anyone know a way I can exploit my color perception deficiency for financial gain?
Oh well, it could be worse. I could be left handed too…
Oh wait, I am left handed.
Doh!
P.S. Mom, you know I love you, but your X chromosome is to blame. It’s all your fault
P.P.S. Next person who points to something and asks me what color that thing is, is going to have their finger grabbed by me and snapped off. Then I’ll chew it up, so doctors can’t reattach it.
Ok Str8_Dope, here’s how I see things (no pun intended)…
No matter how terrible or unjust you or I may think life is, there is always going to be someone out there who has a better life than us, and there is always going to be someone out there who is worse off than us. Sure there are people who can distinguish between colors, but then again, there are loads of people out there who can’t see at all. They would be so grateful to have your life. I am not trying to trivialize your problems, just trying to put things in perspective.
Intelligence analyst- you see patterns and changes in them better than those with full-spectrum vision. Like, seeing the shape of a hidden tank or building.
You are also very good at puzzles. Again, it’s the shape thing, and not being distracted by color.
It does suck to be color-blind. You said you don’t know if you are red-green or blue-green? Your doctor really should be able to tell…
My husband is color-blind, and it affects you in strange ways. Try to dress yourself sometime, when you can’t distinguish green from brown from red. We used a system similar to Garanimals. Garanimals was a kids clothing line where if the tags matched, the clothes matched, no questions or guessing.
As noted above, not the most hideous problem a human could have, but I sympathize.
You could try out Oliver Sack’s book “The Island of the Colorblind”, a non-fiction book about a polynesian island with a very high incidence of hereditary achromatopsia. Although that doesn’t seem like what you have, since that disorder also causes terrible sensitivity to daylight and a general loss in visual acuity.
Or his book “An Anthropologist on Mars”, in one chapter a painter gets a neurological injury that causes him to lose the perception of color.
I’ve got very slight red-green color blindess. I’ve got this brown shirt that my wife insists is really green, and some of the dot numbers look different to me. But I still have a full internal perception of color, just apparantly somewhat shifted from the average persons.
I know exactly how you feel! I am female and colour-blind (not red-green) and not only do people ask me what colour things are, they ask me “Doesn’t that only affect men?” I wanted to be an FBI agent since the time I was seven, and I’m only beginning to accept that I cannot. And yes, sometimes I do feel like a jackass when I’m wearing a brown shirt with navy pants. (Most of the time I write the colour on the tag.) But just remember, it dmay drive you nuts, but there are some people that are actually impressed by it. =P
I know that there are people with more serious handicaps than lack of normal color perception. I was in no way trying to exaggerate my problem and present it as a disability on par with being blind. However, this being the BBQ Pit, I was just letting out a little steam from a lifetime of annoyances caused by my being colorblind. I don’t feel sorry for myself, just annoyed at the limited jobs available to me because of this condition (considering that most of the careers I’ve ever found interesting are off limits to me: F.B.I., Forensic Pathologist, E.M.T., Officer on an ocean ship…).
My dad did this during the Korean War…errrrr, police action, and while this is a somewhat limited applicability, it IS an advantage that the colorblind have.
I sort of know how you feel, I’m legally blind without correction, and this has limited my job opportunities too.
Other than looking at those circles with the littled colored dots at the eye doctor’s office*, I can count the number of times I’ve even noticed my color blindness over 34 years on one hand.
A particularly lamentable affliction this isn’t.
[sub](*You know the ones where you’re supposed to see a number? I see the numbers in some circles, but don’t see any where I’m supposed to in page after page of some other color shades.)[/sub]
The only drawback I’ve found for my red-green colour-blindness is that, as I am an artist (of sorts - I don’t like calling myself an artist) I have to be very careful when I use colour.
Usually I try to stick with black and white or pencil drawings, or use colours in a generally acceptable way. But every so often, colours get to be an important factor and I’m at risk of cocking it up. Especially with fleshtones, and particularly with colour coordination, of which I am completely awful at figuring out.
