What color is this? … What color is that?

I am colorblind.

OK, that’s not entirely accurate. I have the most common form of red-green colorblindness. Yes, I can see red and green. I just don’t see them the same way everyone else does.

In fact, I hate mentioning it because suddenly I go on trial. The next thing someone will do is point at something and say, “What color is that?”

Do these people walk up to people in wheelchairs and say, “Can you walk?” Before they dump them on the ground?

Perhaps they take away the canes from blind people, so they can watch them walk into traffic too.

Maybe they stomp around deaf people waiting for a response.

It’s not like I can prove I’m colorblind and I’m so slightly colorblind I almost feel guilty even mentioning it.

I didn’t really believe I was colorblind until my mom told me to get “my green coat.” Now, I had this coat for years. I wore it every day in the winter. I wore it between classes. I spent more time with that coat than I have with some of my friends. 

The entire time, I thought this coat was tan.

So when she told me to get my green coat, I told her I didn’t have a green coat.

You can probably guess how this conversation went. I never thought the coat was green. It was my coat. I should be the first one to know it was green.

I went to all of my friends after that and asked what color the coat was. They all told me it was green.

It is weird experience to find out I was seeing the world all wrong.

Although, I still thought the coat was tan.

It wasn’t until I was in an introductory psychology course and the teacher gave an impromptu colorblindness test that I started to believe the coat might be green.

I can’t stop testing myself. Occasionally, I find myself looking at the test online. I keep expecting I’ll see the number hiding in there.

For the most part though, it was something I’d do once a year or so. I mean I can see red and green, it’s a mystery why I can’t see the number. Well, it’s not a mystery, but it’s surprising.

Now the television is starting to feed into my obsession. There’s this commercial for some sort of colorblindness foundation where they flash the test on the screen.

I still can’t see the number.

Maybe that’s why people always ask me what color things are. I don’t really believe I’m colorblind either.

Cameron Probert is the Columbia Basin Herald county reporter. We never thought he was colorblind from looking at his coat or car, just a person of odd taste.