Colour 101.3

Part three of three in the Colour saga. All true...you can't make up this kind of stuff!

No doubt, one day, there will be a part four. Most likely a part five.

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Colour 101.3

Killing time while waiting for a car part for my Honda Civic Si, we wander through the show room, admiring the shiny colours and gleaming chrome of my Honda's brothers and sisters.

It isn't long before a salesman pounces on us like a feral cat.

“Is there something I can show you?” he asks, all but wringing his hands.

I wander over to a CRV and admire the colour.

“It’s a wonderful shade of blue,” I breathe.

My husband lays a hand on my shoulder and, in an apologetic tone, says to the salesman: “She’s colour blind.”

I throw him a questioning look and he says, in a tone reserved for explaining difficult concepts to children, “It’s green, dear.”

Oh.

The salesman stares at me, forces his lips into a shallow smile. His pasty face shifts into an expression of solemn pity, as though my inability to differentiate between green and blue is a tragic handicap that will diminish my quality of life.

"Too, bad," I say to Chris. "If only it were blue."

Knowing the ruse, Chris plays along.

He shrugs. "Maybe next time." And he leads me away to the parts counter.

I glance back, and Mr. Slick's smile is now a thin line.

"Blue that, buddy."

Colour 101.2

Hand-to-god...true story.

Part two of three.

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Colour 101.2

My high school art teacher was eccentric. That's a nice way of saying he was a lunatic.

I'm not being disrespectful. I adored him. As did most of his students. We still do. I think all artists should be a little crazy. Perhaps not to the extreme of hacking off your ear and mailing it to a hooker, but a little looney is good.

Mr. Blaise would wander around the classroom, winding his way around desks and students. He'd stop by my easel and exclaim, in his lisp: “The trees, the trees…they speak to me!”

It didn’t surprise me that he’d get a woody, as it were, over the trees. He was, after all, a crazy artist. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

But after discovering, quite by accident, that I am colour blind, I pulled out my high school art portfolio, and sifted through some old paintings. It was clear why Mr. Blaise was so excited about my work.

All my trees were painted varying shades of blue.

Turns out, I've been doing this since I was a kid. All the trees in my colouring books: blue. All the trees finger painted (wearing one of my dad's old work shirts as a smock) in Mrs. Van Dyke's Grade One class: blue.

I was stunned. Why hadn't anyone said anything?

I asked my mother why she and my dad didn't tell me I was colouring all my trees blue.

She gave me an absent pat on the head.

"We thought you were just being creative, dear."

Colour 101.1

Hand-to-god...true story.

Part one of three.

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Colour 101.1

In the waiting room of my doctor's office, I flip through a magazine.

He's running late. I'm running bored.

I turn to an article about colour blindness. It details the various degrees and facets of colour blindness, pointing out the different colours affected.

Hmmm. Interesting.

Imagine, I wonder, going through life, not seeing what everyone else sees. I am at once filled with sorrow for these pathetic people. How sad, I think.

The article closes with an Ishihara color test—a number, comprised of a series of coloured dots, embedded within a background of more coloured dots.

“If you can distinguish the number nine in the dots,” the article explains, “you have normal colour vision and are not colour blind.”

I scan the picture. Then I take a closer look. I analyze. Take an even closer look.

“What are they talking about?” I'm confused. “There’s no number nine.”

I pause. I reread the explanation; particularly the bit about seeing and not seing the number.

“Oh."

I read it again. I digest that.

"Oh shit."