When Aaron was three he insisted on wearing his "pink" shirt. We tried to convince him that he didn't own any pink shirts and that pink was generally a girls color. But he always argued otherwise and would then proudly put on his gray T-shirt. He seemed happy though, so we gave up arguing with him. For awhile we thought he was just confused about his colors.
Then one day Aaron came home from school with an assignment that required him to color a picture coded with numbers. After a first attempt, he finally ended up in tears and explained that he didn't know brown from orange or green. Though it had occurred to us before, this episode confirmed our suspicions: Aaron is color blind.
Red-green colorblindness is a sex-linked trait passed down from the mother on the X chromosome. My grandfather had it and the trait was passed on to my mother, who is a carrier. My brother was spared, but several of my male cousins (on my mom's side) are color blind. I knew I had a 50% chance of being a carrier, but I wouldn't know for sure unless I had a color blind son. Aaron is the first of his generation in my family to have received the phenotype.
For awhile, we thought both boys were fine. When they were little, I tested them frequently by having them determine the difference between two Legos identical in shape: one red and one green. They got it right every time and I dismissed the idea of colorblindness. What I didn't realize though, was that it is certain shades of red and green that color blind people struggle with. Aaron can tell between a true red and a true green. But when it comes to orange, browns, and various shades of green, all bets are off. The other day, Aaron was drawing shapes on the computer and clicking on different color options. He clicked on a color and then exclaimed, "Oh! That's a nice orange!" John and I tried to stifle our snickers when we looked on the screen and saw that the oval he drew was a pukey green color. Poor kid. "Yeah, that is a nice orange, Aaron!", we replied. (Really, what else could we say)?
I find colorblindness interesting in a genetic sense and strange in how it affects one's vision. Though I know Aaron may run across a few small dilemmas with it in his lifetime (he will never be a pilot, for example), I can't help but be grateful that his condition isn't something serious. I can't imagine how it is for the mother who suffers from passing on something like Duchenne's muscular distrophy to her sons (a disease that is passed on via the X chromosome, the same way as colorblindness). I am grateful that my worries with Aaron's condition won't extend much beyond jokes from his twin brother convincing him to dress in a gray shirt (that's really pink), when they are teenagers!
2 comments:
I've worked with several guys who were color blind. I don't think it will limit him much; they had great coping mechanisms!
Besides a pilot, he also probably shouldn't work in the paint department at Lowe's. LOL For that matter, he'll probably have to defer to his wife on what colors to paint a house. ;) But then, many non-color blind men are in that position.
Tim is color blind as was his mom, his mom's sister and his nephew. We were also concerned with Ian. When he was 2 everything was Orange. Tim insists that he is not color blind rather color illeriate. He wants to sue Crayola. When someone would say color this a certaincolor or what color is this all he did was read the color on the crayon. It is a joke in our family, especially when he has to ask Ian or Lina what color something is.
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