Potato; potato. Tomato; tomato. Sasheer Zamata; Sasheer Zamata.

Different people experience these words differently, some people pronouncing them the right way, such as potato and most certainly not potato, and some people not knowing who Sasheer Zamata is. One thing everyone can agree on, though, is that these things at least all look the same. Or do they? Let me explain: I understand that potatoes are brown, I get that tomatoes are red, and no one can deny that Sasheer Zamata is a beautiful human being, but my eyes are a couple of almond-shaped traitors that cause me to perceive certain tints and shades differently than you. Wild stuff, right?

I discovered my color blindness early on without really knowing that I had it. I would see cars pass by and say something like, “look at that blue car” and someone would correct me. I would persist in my answer and everyone would laugh at the child prodigy who had already mastered absurdist humor. I thought “hey I should get my own humor column one of these days.”

My disregard for wavelengths didn’t become a problem until early middle school after taking a math test. We had to explain with fractions how much of a pie chart was filled in with certain colors, such as half of it being green, a quarter being purple, and so forth. Even worse, I had to… *gulp* justify my answer using mathematics. Needless to say, I didn’t do so hot. My answers were so bizarre that my teacher called me out with a, “Why don’t you try next time, Robert?” Even though she addressed me by my slave name I answered, “Was this like a joke exam or something?” That little bit of sass got me sent out of class. I stated my case to my teacher, but to no avail. She just couldn’t understand why I claimed that one fifth of the chart was orange when there was no orange present. I just sort of cheated in math class from there on out, but I somehow still managed to barely pass math courses for the remainder of my academic career.

I never really sought medical assistance for my malady. It didn’t affect me that much outside of math, and I wasn't about to pass up an excuse to be bad at math. Out of curiosity, I took some online color blindness tests. According to this color blindness test, I’m a “strong Deutan.” Apparently, “Deutans are people with deuteranomaly, a type of red-green color blindness in which the green cone doesn’t detect enough green but is too sensitive to yellows, oranges, and reds. As a result, greens, yellows, oranges, reds, and browns may appear similar, especially in low light. It can also be difficult to tell the difference between blues and purples, or pinks and grays.” Story of my life. At least I’m a strong one! Confirmation that my eyes are dumb made me feel sad, then angry as the website tried to sell me some glasses that would correct my vision.

Now for the part you’ve all been waiting for. What is it like to be color blind?

Color blindness hasn’t had a huge impact on my life. I occasionally mention my color blindness when people bring up the subject. It really seems to fascinate people. I’m expected to prove it somehow. “What color is my shirt?” is a popular question I get. Not sure, but I know it’s not your color, honey.

My individual color blindness mainly just keeps me from differentiating between certain tints and shades. Sometimes a red won’t be vivid enough, and I can mistake it for a green. Every now and then I’ll run into a purple that, for the life of me, I can’t tell if it’s purple, blue, indigo, gah there’s so many options! It’s like math with all those numbers! One weird thing is that proximity seems to have a role in my assessment of colors. The other day I was looking at a pink windscreen on a microphone, but behind it was a gray (I assume) wall. Upon first inspection, the pink windscreen looked gray, but after repositioning myself and walking up to the windscreen, it was most definitely pink.

That’s pretty much it. I’m not hindered too badly, just missing out some. Every now and then if I’m dressed poorly I can rely on my color blindness as an excuse to not get bullied by beautiful people. I can still drive even though the most important traffic lights are red and green. They are red enough and green enough to where I can differentiate and they're also not on at the same time, so that helps. Just to make sure everyone else is safe, I know that the red light is the top light and the green one is the bottom.

Or is it the other way around?

There are other reasons I’m a bad driver, but color blindness is not one of them. Also, in middle school, I was not very good at team sports because the jersey colors threw me off a bit. Why do we have to have a purple and a blue team on the field at the same time? We have white, black, and yellow jerseys, is there some sort of legendary rivalry between the purple team and the blue team that I wasn’t here for? However, even if I did have perfect vision I don’t think that would help my soccer skills one bit.

To sum everything up, my color blindness is not debilitating at all, but sometimes it’s a little frustrating, like math. I’m not sure if it’s genetics or if I could’ve prevented it somehow, but it’s a nifty little malady that I'll have until I die.