May 11th, 2021

Behold!  Two different summery colours of nail polish.  On the left is a pale minty green and on the right is a very light blue. Pretty ;)

I can very clearly tell the different between them in this picture. Clear and unmistakable distinction, pale green and light blue, right?  You do see it don't you?  Coz I do.

I already had the light blue polish but I saw the green in the grocery store a few weeks ago and it kind of called to me.  I ignored the call for a few weeks but last week, I gave in and treated myself.  And over the weekend, for the very first time, I gave myself a pedicure and put the new minty green cool fresh polish on.

And it looks blue to me.  What?  It's a very bizarre and recent phenomenon.  In the bottle it appears to be distinctly mint green. On my toes however, blue. Very blue.   At first I thought I had had a "moment" and accidentally put the blue on instead.  But nope.  It's the green.  Except to me it looks blue.  And I am completely baffled.   

I have always known that I have tiny bit of difficulty with colours.  Navy blue and black look exactly the same to me.  Whenever I buy something that is Navy or Black I have to check with someone else to see what colour is actually is.  When I am all dressed and ready to be seen in public I don't want other folks thinking I am incapable of dressing myself, y'know?  Which is why I have my closet organized by the colour that I am told things are, not what colours they appear to be to me.  All the black things are together, and the blue things are together.....this way on a sleepy morning no mistakes (of that sort anyway) are made.  It works for me.

But I honestly believed that was really the only colour problem I had. Silly me.  As I've gotten older the colour issue has only gotten worse.  First it was with iffy colours like shades of those pinks that lean into coral.  Is it pink?  Is it orange?  Then it was those borderline shades of lavender that could almost be a blue. And the yellowy green shades that Tim insists are yellow and I see them as green.  (by the way Tim is totally correct)  Those borderline colours are a pain in the ass. at least for me.

We were at someone else's home recently and for some inane reason I remarked on the beige colour of the wall in the kitchen.  Turns out it's a very light grey. Damnit!  I was wrong again!  I need to stop discussing colours with people I think.

Still it's completely bizarre to know - to absolutely positively without a single glimmer of doubt perceive a colour is one thing only to learn that it is something else entirely.  It is kind of turning my world upside down.  

So to make it ever stranger, the new pale minty green polish on my toes, which looks so very BLUE to me in person, I see as green in this photo: 

How Weird Is That?  When I took the photo I expected to also see the polish as blue but instead I definitely see it as the colour it actually is,  green. I am looking at my toes right now, this very minute - the exact same toes in the exact same green polish in the exact same sandals - the  colour looks blue! I'm so confuzled!  So the score thus far is:  Green in the bottle, green in the photo, blue in person.  Strange and inexplicable!

And I am now seriously doubting all of my colour perceptions. All of them!  

I already knew that as we get older our vision changes (that already happened) hearing changes (yup that happened too) and that eventually our sense of smell and taste would change (that has NOT happened).  BUT nobody prepared me for the colours looks wierd thing.  

Or maybe it's only happening to me.  Maybe it's not an age thing.  Perhaps I've always been right on the edge of some sort of colour blindness my entire life only now it's getting worse?  It's not full on colour blindness.  It's not even a type of official colour blindness that I've ever heard of.  I even took several of those online colour blindness tests and scored sort of normal.  Not perfect but within the very wide realm of normal.   So what the actual heck?

I've no idea.  Meanwhile I still like my green or blue or whatever the heck colour polish that I'm currently wearing. But forgive me if I never discuss colour with you again as it appears that odds are good I will be wrong.