In second grade, my eye doctor diagnosed me as red-green-blue colorblind; anything that has shades of those three colors appear differently to me than they would to you. Since then, I've gotten many questions from people with normal vision about colorblindness. Some of them are asked by almost everyone who learns I am colorblind, so I've compiled a list of the top five things you should know about people with colorblindness.

1. I gave up on trying to match my clothes a long time ago

Matching clothes together to form an outfit is really hard. It's not uncommon to see me wearing red shorts and a green shirt or a blue shirt and purple shorts. I get some strange looks sometimes, but it doesn't bother me anymore.

2. I failed at making a color wheel in grade school art class

In fifth grade, we had to make a color wheel in art class. I ended up putting green where I should have put red and red where I should have put green. After I explained the situation to my art teacher, she excused me from the assignment but it was still pretty embarrassing to get an F on a color wheel assignment.

3. Blue and purple are the same

Blue and purple are indistinguishable to me. When I go to basketball games and the home team is in purple and the away team is in blue (or vice versa), I invariably find myself thinking a player is shooting at the wrong basket. It usually takes me a second or two, but I eventually realize that the player is shooting at the correct basket and I just mixed up the color of his uniform. It doesn't help that my school's colors include purple, either.

4. Laser pointers are no help in a presentation

It's really difficult for me to see the red dot from a laser pointer. It's almost invisible to me, so using it in a presentation doesn't make anything stand out.

5. Stoplights appear white, yellow and orange

Instead of the usual green, yellow and red stoplight, I see a white, yellow and orange traffic light. Don't worry though, I can drive just fine since I can still differentiate between the three lights.