“Dad, Can’t You See Those Colors?”

I am red-green colorblind and my son is not.

Last week we were with the whole family on ski holidays. It was snowing almost the whole week long. Not really good weather, but anyway we had a good time with all the snow.

One day together with my 3 yo. son we took some plastic plates which are meant to sit on and slide down the hills, like some sort of sledges. One of them in a bright yellow and the other one in a bright green. Both very bright colors.

When we stood on the hill my son said: “I take the green one, you can have the yellow sledge.”

I said: “Which is the green one?”

He looked at me — puzzled. (What does he mean? Why does he ask me that? One is green and one is yellow, that’s for sure. Is my father to stupid to see that?)

My son said: “Can’t you see the colors?”

I said: “No, I’m sorry.”

And I suppose, he forgot about it again just in that very moment. A next situation like this will arrive soon, I’m sure.

5 responses on ““Dad, Can’t You See Those Colors?”

  1. Scott

    Im waiting for this day to come. Im having a baby boy here shortly and its going to be a fun time once he starts learning colors i imagine. Im color blind and he wont be.

  2. Hakim

    Hi.

    I remember one time I was with my colourblind friend, working on designing a T-shirt, and we were both quite tired already at one point (we’d been working for quite some time by then). And he just needed to pic the colours for the T-shirt. He picked out blue easily, but he took forever to pick the red.

    And, I forgot he was colourblind…and I kinda snapped at him: “Are you kidding me?! Red is right there!”

    Gosh I felt like an idiot 2 minutes later when I remembered that he’s colourblind. Gosh I’m so sorry…

  3. Gary

    I recently bought one of those newish green florescent shirts that looks totally yellow to my eyes. I wish color coordinators would keep greens in the cool range (like most of the traffic lights do) so that we 8 or 10 percenters know what the heck the greens are?