I don’t give a tinker’s damn what anyone else says. That dress was gold and white.
You might have been lost in a snow drift in Meddybemps last week, but the entire nation, nay, the world, was fighting over that dress on the Internet. If you haven’t seen it, it was gold and white. Pay no heed to the people who said it was blue and black. They know not what they do.
The argument was so virulent that it threatened to close down the entire Internet. Then what would we do?
I am no stranger to color arguments, being colorblind since birth. I knew nothing of this malady until I signed up for a psychology course at Northeastern University. I thought it might help. (It didn’t.) In the back of the very expensive textbook, there was a color chart where you could read a hidden number. I was so ignorant, that I actually brought my book to the professor and said there was something wrong. There was no number in my book.
He gave me that “you are so pathetic” look that I became so familiar with in later years. It was then and only then that I discovered I was … colorblind. When I confessed this weakness in later years, some people, especially women, would say, “That’s why you wear those color combinations!” Color meant virtually nothing to me, so I would pick the top shirt off the pile, the top pants and the top tie. I never knew they were supposed to “go together.”
In the waning days at Northeastern, I was running out of funds, despite the very low cost of education in those days. My father was a lifetime employee of the New Haven Railroad. He said there were new “anti-featherbedding” laws being passed. In effect, they were cutting the job of coal shoveler, since all the engines were diesel. But it would take awhile, as all legislation does. All I had to do was hang out the train engine window and tell the engineer if the light was red or green. Simple, but very, very crucial, right? This was a very well-paying, if temporary job. It paid over $300 per week in those days. I would be getting far more than any NU “Co-op” students. Hell, I might be making more than the dean.
The railroad employment guy gave me a “pin spot” color test with tiny little lights in various gradations. I had my bags packed, ready to take my place next to Casey Jones.
“Sorry,” he said. “I have known your father for 30 years and would do anything for him. But you cannot do this job.”
Heartbroken, another career shot to hell, I left South Station to take my place with the other non-railroad masses.
Then, I remembered how everyone rode me about my “purple pants” at Roslindale High School. I had purchased these duds in the fluorescent light of Filene’s basement and assumed they were black. Why did those cruel students keep bringing up my “purple pants?” Then, one day on the bus, a ray of Roslindale sunshine played across my pants. Good God, they were purple!
I kept wearing them anyway. Just because.
Perhaps prompted by the (gold and white) dress debate, there have been a number of stories about color blindness correction this week. One innovative system “uses filters to change the wavelength of each color that goes into your eyes. These filters are uniquely designed for each individual, and can be worn as color corrective contact lenses or colorblind corrective glasses.
“The process for getting colorblind glasses is both easy and painless. With the Color Correction System, your filters are simply inserted into a pair of glasses. It’s a systematic approach to curing colorblindness, and it is customized to meet your needs,” the ad said.
I don’t care what it costs or how well it works. It’s a little late in the game for any color changes. And that dress was gold and white.
Wait! Was that a red light?
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the BDN in Rockland for 30 years.