My whole life, I’ve never taken much notice of people’s eye color. I almost never remember people’s eye color, even people I’m very familiar with. Thinking of my 5 closest friends, one of whom I’ve known for over 30 years, I can’t confidently tell you any of their eye colors. Thinking of famous actors who I’m pretty familiar with, I can’t think of one whose eye color I know for sure, except a few whose eye color I’ve heard or read about (“Old Blue Eyes”). I was recently thinking about this when I was musing that it’s always seemed odd to me that police “wanted” reports often mention the person’s eye color, as if that’s something that you’d notice about a stranger whom you briefly meet. I certainly don’t.
I have normal color vision, and don’t have nearly as much trouble remembering hair color or clothes color as I do eye color. Does this seem very odd to you? Do you notice and remember the eye color of most people you know?
Other than my wife and daughters, I couldn’t tell you anyone’s eye color. That includes my brothers and my mother. My father, I remember for some reason, had the same as me.
Sometimes, when they’re very unusual. For example, those twins whose only easy-to-see physical difference was green vs blue eyes, or that gorgeous black guy with light-grey eyes. For someone whose eye color I don’t remember, if I’m asked I’ll just guess “brown”
Something to take into account is that eye color is not necessarily evident. Glasses (even if clear), small eyes… make eye color relatively hard to see compared with other features.
I don’t tend to notice colors at all. They just don’t interest me, I guess. I can rarely tell you what color a car was that just drove by, or what color jacket someone was wearing. Certainly not eye colors.
That said, I believe trained observers, like police officers and detectives, make a point of noticing such things.
Same here – unusual shades (particularly light-colored eyes) stand out, at least a little bit, but otherwise, most people’s eyes are all sort of in a narrow range of brown-to-hazel in my mind.
I am like you. Unless the eyes are striking or famous, I don’t notice.
OTOH, me and 2 of my kids have very light blue eyes and we are constantly remarked to, about them. Questions like “Are y’all albinos?” We have pale skin and light blond hair too. So, at least the people I run into notice.
Yes. I can tell you the eye colour of most of my friends without even thinking about it, and I could probably come up with the eye colour of co-workers and anyone I regularly interact with with a fair degree of certainty.
Now THOSE kind of eyes I can remember. I remember riding the tram at the Houston airport. There were these two twin girls there with the most beautiful light blue eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. I was so tempted to ask them if they were real, but didn’t, because I felt that would be rude or make them uncomfortable. Luckily, someone else on the tram asked them if they were real. They said they were.
They had pale skin too Beck. Wonder if there’s a connection?
Seriously, replace her last line with, “I’m not talking to you until you can answer that question, and so you don’t cheat, I’m wearing sunglasses until you do,” and you just described Homer and Marge on The Simpsons - right down to her hazel eyes.
I’ve been blind in my left eye since birth and for some reason the iris is a color most would describe as brown. My working eye has a pale blue color like all the rest of my family growing up and my son (so I assume I’m genetically blue). When my wife’s (before she was such) brother asked her a similar question, she could not answer. When I heard about this, I told him I’d give him a close look then he had to answer.
Johnny Carson once interviewed an actress who was a very large-breasted blonde. The conversation turned to her personal life, and she mentioned that she and her husband had been married for umpteen years.
Carson: How did you know that he was The One?
Actress: Close your eyes.
Carson: [Closes his eyes.]
Actress: What color are my eyes?
Carson: [Blushes, and stammers, and finally admits that he has no idea.]
My SO, who is Asian, says he doesn’t, and he thinks that people who grew up where most everyone had the same eye color don’t tend to register it in others. He says he notices peoples’ noses more.
