Zedar Kalihyuri
10-23-2005, 04:20 PM
Ok, I've already posted this on a previous thread... but its one of those threads in Misc that seems to have 500 submitters to every five readers. So, out of desire to find someone else with this visual deficiency, I'm making a thread about it, hoping someone in AF's populos has eyes as screwed up as mine.
---Before you read any further, mind you that anything I say has to do with my own personal experiences, meaning that I've either deduced this myself from VERY minor research, or have been told by a specialist about what I will discuss. This means that I may have false information below posted, or that the specialist who told me about color-blindness hass a bullcrap title, and doesn't know jack. In otherwords, I hope I'm not offending anyone who reads this.---
So, my eyes.
For those of you who didn't pay attention in Biology I, or haven't taken it yet, Inside most peoples retinae ((Retina singular, the black dots of your eyes, where your vision undergoes magnification and your brains defining processes.)) you have menagerie of blue, yellow, and red cones. For those of you who've never taken an art class, these colors can be mixed to form all of the colors normal human eyes can see.
Now, with most color-blind people, your retinae hold instead of yhellow and blue cones, static, or 'gray' cones. This means that your eyes see in shades of gray and, to a very small extent, red. Thats right, the color-blind are actually 'color'-blind. There have been other forms of color-blindness, and some odd cases where a persons eyes could see into the ultraviolet, and I believe infrared spectrums, but for the most part, thats the common version of color blindness.
The problem with my eyes is much more suttle than any of this. I have a larger amount of blue cones than red or green cones in my eyes. This isn't to say I can't see a decent amount of color, I still have plenty of red and yellow cones-enough to see all of the colors really. What it does mean, is that everything I see has an almost invisible tint of blue.
I and my parents didn't really understand it until a vision specialist sat down and told us--in exhausting detail, and I mean worse than I'm doing now--exactly what I've just told you all. Even then, I didn't understand what was wrong until two years later. In those two years, while turning the matter over and over again in my head, I went through a stage where, to keep from having to explain what I didn't even understand, I just told people I saw in shades of blue.
Then, they'd ask me these bullcrap questions about my eyes.
"What color is this pencil? The eraser on it? You see in shades of blue? So we're all Smurfs to you? Which Smurf do I look like?" Most people stopped when I told them they all looked like smurfs to me, but a kid asked that question one time and I just walked off in a huff.
By the time of my Sohpmore year, I'd finally come up with a good example, that, quite frankly, still happens to me several times a school-day. So I'll share it with you all.
__________________________________________________ ______________
Picture a white-board. You're about five feet away from it, and your Teacher is writing on it with a sky blue marker. She finishes, and walks off, and you try and take down the notes from what she's written. At five feet, with your eyes wide, you can see the words perfectly for the most part, but sometimes when the letters are at a certain angle from your gaze, you have to squint your eyes to see everything clearly.
You're not exactly on top of your game today, and your chatting with friends, having a good time. So your teacher sends you to the back of the room. You're about twenty feet away from the board now, and with your eyes wide open, you can't even tell the paragraph is there. When you squint your eyes, you can see certain variations of color, but it doesn't even look like a paragraph, just a spray-painted blod of slightly darker blue.
So lets walk you through the distances. Say, you're five feet away again. Everythings as it was before, the wqhite-board, the blue markered paragraph. Try backing away five feet. So, now you're ten feet away. You can't really tell that there are words, if your eyes are wide open, just a jumbling of lines. Even when you're squinting, at this distance, you find yourself wanting to lean forward--not all of the wordfs are clear enough to read intelligably, and you find it like reading a five year olds handwriting.
So back aweay another five feet. Now, at fifteen feet, with your eyes wide open, you can't even see a paragraph structure, just the spray-painted blurb you remember squinting at 20 feet. When you squint your eyes, you might recognize your favorite letter, and numbers, but otherwise its almost impossible to read.
This is only the tip of the ice-berg, as far as the problems my eyes have created for me in every day situations. I can't te whether a traffic light is yellow red in broad daylight, if I can tell that its shining anything but green at all. For walk/dont-walk signs, in broad daylight, sometimes I can't even tell that they're telling me to walk, and so I have to go to the next intersection, or J-walk when no ones on the road I need to cross. There are an infinite amount of other problems this creates, but for the most part, its navigating outdoors, and dealing with blending colors.
So, with all that said, does ANYONE have any thoughts, or have a visual impairment remotely close to mine?
---Before you read any further, mind you that anything I say has to do with my own personal experiences, meaning that I've either deduced this myself from VERY minor research, or have been told by a specialist about what I will discuss. This means that I may have false information below posted, or that the specialist who told me about color-blindness hass a bullcrap title, and doesn't know jack. In otherwords, I hope I'm not offending anyone who reads this.---
So, my eyes.
For those of you who didn't pay attention in Biology I, or haven't taken it yet, Inside most peoples retinae ((Retina singular, the black dots of your eyes, where your vision undergoes magnification and your brains defining processes.)) you have menagerie of blue, yellow, and red cones. For those of you who've never taken an art class, these colors can be mixed to form all of the colors normal human eyes can see.
Now, with most color-blind people, your retinae hold instead of yhellow and blue cones, static, or 'gray' cones. This means that your eyes see in shades of gray and, to a very small extent, red. Thats right, the color-blind are actually 'color'-blind. There have been other forms of color-blindness, and some odd cases where a persons eyes could see into the ultraviolet, and I believe infrared spectrums, but for the most part, thats the common version of color blindness.
The problem with my eyes is much more suttle than any of this. I have a larger amount of blue cones than red or green cones in my eyes. This isn't to say I can't see a decent amount of color, I still have plenty of red and yellow cones-enough to see all of the colors really. What it does mean, is that everything I see has an almost invisible tint of blue.
I and my parents didn't really understand it until a vision specialist sat down and told us--in exhausting detail, and I mean worse than I'm doing now--exactly what I've just told you all. Even then, I didn't understand what was wrong until two years later. In those two years, while turning the matter over and over again in my head, I went through a stage where, to keep from having to explain what I didn't even understand, I just told people I saw in shades of blue.
Then, they'd ask me these bullcrap questions about my eyes.
"What color is this pencil? The eraser on it? You see in shades of blue? So we're all Smurfs to you? Which Smurf do I look like?" Most people stopped when I told them they all looked like smurfs to me, but a kid asked that question one time and I just walked off in a huff.
By the time of my Sohpmore year, I'd finally come up with a good example, that, quite frankly, still happens to me several times a school-day. So I'll share it with you all.
__________________________________________________ ______________
Picture a white-board. You're about five feet away from it, and your Teacher is writing on it with a sky blue marker. She finishes, and walks off, and you try and take down the notes from what she's written. At five feet, with your eyes wide, you can see the words perfectly for the most part, but sometimes when the letters are at a certain angle from your gaze, you have to squint your eyes to see everything clearly.
You're not exactly on top of your game today, and your chatting with friends, having a good time. So your teacher sends you to the back of the room. You're about twenty feet away from the board now, and with your eyes wide open, you can't even tell the paragraph is there. When you squint your eyes, you can see certain variations of color, but it doesn't even look like a paragraph, just a spray-painted blod of slightly darker blue.
So lets walk you through the distances. Say, you're five feet away again. Everythings as it was before, the wqhite-board, the blue markered paragraph. Try backing away five feet. So, now you're ten feet away. You can't really tell that there are words, if your eyes are wide open, just a jumbling of lines. Even when you're squinting, at this distance, you find yourself wanting to lean forward--not all of the wordfs are clear enough to read intelligably, and you find it like reading a five year olds handwriting.
So back aweay another five feet. Now, at fifteen feet, with your eyes wide open, you can't even see a paragraph structure, just the spray-painted blurb you remember squinting at 20 feet. When you squint your eyes, you might recognize your favorite letter, and numbers, but otherwise its almost impossible to read.
This is only the tip of the ice-berg, as far as the problems my eyes have created for me in every day situations. I can't te whether a traffic light is yellow red in broad daylight, if I can tell that its shining anything but green at all. For walk/dont-walk signs, in broad daylight, sometimes I can't even tell that they're telling me to walk, and so I have to go to the next intersection, or J-walk when no ones on the road I need to cross. There are an infinite amount of other problems this creates, but for the most part, its navigating outdoors, and dealing with blending colors.
So, with all that said, does ANYONE have any thoughts, or have a visual impairment remotely close to mine?