“You must be color blind, his mother told him.
He looked at the box of water colors: alizarin, vermillion, yellow, ultramarine, cobalt, blue green, yellow green, black, white, brown, orange.
It was tantalizing. He could see every color there. He knew every shade of difference between those colors. He looked about at the trees out on the street, at the color of the sidewalks, at houses. No inflection of color escaped him. He recognized every one. He wasnt color blind, he knew he wasnt. But he couldnt name those colors. Why hadnt he got a set that had names beside each colour . . .”
—Julian Lee Rayford, from Cottonmouth, 1941.
grass is orange, monkey grass and magnolia’s ’re red, and there is no pink in sunsets.
It turns out that this child isn’t color blind at all, he just hasn’t learned the names yet. But, sadly, there are people who are truly color blind, as you well know Johnny.
No disrespect intended. Some of my other best friends are color blind too. Charles Quesenberry is color blind. Uh . . . I had an achromatic (no color just black and BRIGHT light) student too.