Colorful?

One of the many games Dad played with kids had to do with color. As a child began learning the names of the colors, Dad would tease her. No matter what color the child identified, Dad would say it was another color. Mom says that he substituted specific colors (ie, he always said something red was blue, etc...), but none of us seem to know the code he used. Dad played this game for years. He told stories about one of my older cousins becoming convinced as a toddler that white was black and vice versa. (And though Dad never said who was responsible for having confused that particular child, I have my suspicions...)

But now I'm going to tell you the rest of the story...

When I was a teenager, Dad often asked for help selecting his clothes. Frequently, I would pick an outfit and lay it out on his bed. What man in a house full of women doesn't get a lot of fashion advice?  I never thought it was unusual.

Later, when we chose the colors to paint our first house, Dad didn't think the colors looked good together. We used the colors anyway, and the house looked great. Everyone agreed. It looked so good that Dad started making sure to get a second opinion before painting a house himself.  Still, I didn't think that was odd.

I thought Dad didn't pay attention to things like fashion and color. Really, it was more than that. As a child, I knew of distant cousins in my mom's family who were colorblind. I didn't know of any on Dad's side. Turns out, I really didn't have to look too far. 

Hindsight being 20/20, I realize that it wasn't that Dad didn't care about subtle color differences. He couldn't see them. He may never have been told he was colorblind, but he certainly had abnormal color vision.

Not long after Dad died, I asked our optometrist about color vision. She assured me that we have tested mine, and both of my daughters'. When we pulled the records, we saw that one of 

my daughters did fine on the color vision tests. But my other daughter scored exactly 50%.  It is almost unheard of for a girl to have abnormal color vision. My daughter was given a passing score because she got half of the answers correct, and she was very young when she was tested. 

We tested my daughter again. She scored 50%. We certainly can't say she doesn't know her numbers now. She has abnormal color vision. She is not the only one of Dad's descendants that does. 

It explains a family tendency to love bright, even fluorescent colors. Maybe it explains even more than that. I can only imagine the puns Dad would have come up with about the "colorful" members of our family. 

Certainly, it made him an even more colorful character.