Color Codes Oleg Daugovish   © Copyright 2025 by Oleg Daugovish

Perception of colour by subjects affected by different types of colour blindness. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

As a straight white guy, I don’t get enough discrimination. I’ll try to generate some today.

Taking after John Dalton, I see colors differently than ninety percent of the people. Such a gentle disability, it calls for challenge and heart-felt ridicule.

“How colorblind are you?” People ask.

I shrug.

“Can you see traffic lights?” The test continues.

“The red one is always on top, right?” I act serious. “Except in western Nebraska.” I pause to gauge their concern. “It’s on the left there. The lights are attached sideways, so that tornadoes don’t break them off.’”

The medics gave up on finding cure for the colorblindness and I cherish it.

The strawberries I picked in the forest as a kid were blushing white.

Excused.

Similar colors I placed into a laundry load produced a debatable result.

Banned.

My wife’s blouse always matches her shoe color, in my opinion. “Looks great!”

“Ahh…never mind.” She dismisses my honest feedback.

Serving in the police force or flying a jet were never on my list of careers.

On Sunday morning, my ten-year-old Sofie accompanies me to the botanical garden where we check out colorblindness-correcting glasses. An attendant takes my credit card and drivers’ license in exchange for the magic shades. Can’t trust them daltonics.

Sofie puts the glasses on first and frowns: “Nothing changed!” She passes them to me.

A customer quote I read online pokes like a splinter in my head: “I feel the gift of color is wasted on many. They don’t appreciate the vibrancy of the world they have.”

What if I like the color-correct world, how will I go back? Would I stay in the Emerald City, scared to take off the lenses?

I put on the glasses.

“Son of a b…bicycle!” I exclaim.

“Tricycle!” Sofie responds.

My friends, yellow, white and blue stay true to me, but the traitors, green and teal turn into pink and orange. The gentle brown stems of the shrubs become psychotic carrots, the grey round rocks along the trail transform into flamboyant red beets. The intoxicating colors hurt my brain as if someone splashed spicy sauces into my eyes and they burn my receptors.

I take off the glasses.

The saturated landscape of Matisse returns to the familiar soft shades of Monet.

The jungle of screaming monkey-flowers and red columbines fades to mimic the desert around them. The colors camouflage back into the world where I belong.

“Drab landscape” is what the lens manufacturers call it.

Sofies’ allergy to dust prompts us to return to the gardens’ office.

“Did you like the glasses?” The attendant expects gratitude for fixing a defect.

“He hated them!” Sofie exclaims with a sneeze before I come up with response.

“Hate is a strong word,” I remind her.

Would you offer a black person white skin for a “more wholesome life experience”?

Instead, I reply: “Would you offer people glasses to see the world the way colorblind folks do? It’s not inferior, it’s different.”

The attendant shakes his head with a sour smile and returns my cards.

As we drive home, Sofie challenges me to quiz her about the U.S. states and their capitals. She makes no mistakes.

“I’d like to go on a road trip to see them all,” she hints.

“It would take too much time; the distances are too long,” I reply.

Sofie pauses for a moment.

“You know who I’ll be when I grow up?”

“Who?” I glance in to her brown eyes in a rear-view mirror.

“I’ll be a pilot.”