Seeing, for the first time.

Many of you know that I’m color blind. I have been all my life, obviously, but I didn’t actually know until 3rd grade. I distinctly remember sitting in Twin Elementary during Science class and my teacher was going over the lesson. There was one of those color blind tests in the textbook, the ones where there was a bunch of dots and you were supposed to see a number there. The teacher told us that color blind people couldn’t see the number 7 in the box. Wait. What? A 7? I remember looking at my buddy’s textbook and asking him if he saw a 7. He said, “Sure, right there” and pointed to what for me was a bunch of dots representing nothing.

At that point I knew. Uh-oh.

But honestly, I didn’t think much about it. After all, if you’ve never seen colors what was there to miss? Nothing really. To me it was never a real handicap. So I couldn’t see an orange golf ball in the green grass. No big deal, right?

To me, pink looked light blue, purple looked dark blue, lime green looked yellow, and browns, greens and oranges were pretty much interchangeable. Bottom line a lot of colors looked alike, ya know? Still, it had no major effect on my life. Meh.

Yep. Nuthin’.

Oh, there were bumps in the road. The green light at an intersection looked white, and when I coached I couldn’t, for some reason, see the scoreboard lights in a gym or on a football field if they were red. The scoreboard just looked like it was turned off to me. Why, I do not know. I once asked an official to turn on the scoreboard at Washington Court House High School back when I coached JH football and he politely, yet quizzically, informed me that it was in fact, on. Hell, this past year at Adena High School my assistant coach had to continuously keep me updated on the score of the game because I simply couldn’t see the numbers on the scoreboard. Thanks, Coach McFadden.

Oh, and there was the time I bought school clothes and proudly brought them home to show my older sisters. They insisted I wear a certain pair of jeans on the first day of school because, according to them, I looked great in that particular pair of pants. What happened, you ask? Let’s just say I was the first guy in my class to wear purple jeans to school. Thanks sisters!*

*They’ll deny it to this day. Don’t believe them.

Just this year we were playing a rival school and their colors were purple and gold. I chose what I thought was a blue shirt for the game, but when I walked onto the court one of our fans came up and asked this:

“Uh, coach? You know you’re wearing a purple shirt, right?”

Well, hell. But no, I didn’t know.

Listen, I’ve tried to adjust. I wear a lot of black pants (everything goes with black, right?) and I label my clothes when I can. I have people help me pick out clothes and tell me what matches.

I also knew from an early age that I’d never be an astronaut or an electrician. Something about recognizing different colored wires and whatnot, I don’t know.

So yeah, my color blindness has caused a few problems over the years but it’s mainly been inconveniences, nothing major. I never, ever considered it to be a handicap at all.

I even wrote about it once, and I think I made it clear I’d never use it as a cause for sympathy or anything like that. It’s just colors, for heavens sake. No big deal. Here’s the link to that one.

So all of that brings me to the point of this blog. As I said, colors have basically meant nothing to me for 60+ years. I’d never seen them, so how could I know what I was missing, right? It’s all good, man.

But then . . .

My girlfriend Amanda asked me to go on a picnic this past Wednesday. We had a nice lunch in a local park, just enjoying the beautiful weather and each other. At some point she asked me to take a walk, just her, my dog Sparky and I. After a brief walk she asked me to stop. She then asked me to close my eyes, which I reluctantly did. At that point I felt her put some glasses on my face, and then she said this:

“Open your eyes.”

I did.

And then, at that moment, the world as I knew it changed forever. You see, Amanda had bought me a pair of EnChroma glasses. They enable those that are color blind to see colors.

For a moment I couldn’t speak. I was stunned. All I could do was, well, look. Those colors, those vivid, bright, amazing colors. The world didn’t look real to me. Everything was bursting with these intense hues. It didn’t look real. Before, the browns and greens all looked similar to me. Now, everything was beautifully unique in its own right.

And the grass. Oh, my. The grass. It was stunning.

And then I had this thought:

Everyone else sees this every day?

I felt as if I was living in a dream, that there was no way people saw this sort of beauty every single day of their lives. It was amazing.

As I looked around, other things jumped out at me. A vivid blue restroom sign. The painted yellow tops of the poles around the parking lot. A discarded candy bar wrapper. The digital numbers on my Jeep’s dashboard. Everything was so beautiful.

And somehow, I saw that everything  was clearer, more vivid. I actually felt as if my vision had improved. But then, I think I realized why. It’s because I see all the individual colors now. Before, everything sort of blended together. The green grass, the trees in the forest, the bushes and undergrowth, they all were basically the same. They blended. Now? Things were somehow clearer, somehow sharper.

Every tree, every bush had its own distinct color. Every object, every plant was was separated by its unique color. I saw things more clearly because everything was more defined, for the first-time ever. Wow.

This was all so new to me. And then the same thought came to me again – you guys see this every day? Man, are you spoiled.

For 60-years I was color blind. For 60-years I felt as if it didn’t matter, because in reality it didn’t. Colors schmolors. How could I miss what I’d never known?

But then, last Wednesday, I saw for the very first time what I’d been missing.

And boy, I’d been missing a lot. The world is a beautiful, remarkable place. Yes, even restroom signs and candy bar wrappers are beautiful, believe me. Really beautiful.

But oh, that grass. Don’t ever take it for granted.