This evening I asked Miriam to pass me my water bottle (my campus water bottle, as Phoebe calls it, because it fits into my computer bag...but I drink out of it 100% of the time at home as well because she has co-opted my nightstand water bottle) and for some reason as I was asking her to pass it to me...I said something about "green."
Probably because I usually have a pink water bottle (my home water bottle that only Phoebe uses) and a green water bottle (my campus water bottle) on my nightstand. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
"Will you hand me my green water bottle?" I asked.
I was at my desk. Miriam was sitting on the middle of my bed. It made sense.
"Greeeeeeeeen?" Miriam said, aghast. "This is clearly blue."
"It's green," I said, reaching for it.
"It's blue," she said, yanking it just out of my reach.
"We all know I struggle with this," I said. "My green threshold is different from everyone else in this house. We know this. And that is green."
"It's blue," Rachel said (she was hanging out in my room, too).
"Blue," Andrew said (yes, he was there as well).
"Guys, again. I just see green and blue differently. I will even prove to you that it is green..."
I looked up my purchase order.
"See?" I said, triumphantly. "Turquoise is the official colour listed. So it's green."
"Turquoise is blue," they argued.
"Sure, some turquoise jewelry is blue," I conceded (because very often turquoise stones I see as blue). "But most turquoise things are green. Like crayons that are labeled turquoise...those are absolutely green."
"Turquoise is blue," they argued.
"It says here," I said, pulling up another website. "That turquoise is a mix of blue and green. Just because I'm more sensitive to green hues doesn't make me wrong..."
"Ew. Don't say you're sensitive to green," Rachel said, gagging.
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because it makes you sound like you're right. You're not right."
"I'm not wrong, either. I see it as green..."
We will never agree on this, and that's fine. It just pops up in our family debates every now and again (like whenever I call anything on the blue-green scale "green" and my family disagrees with me—and we're not really fighting about it...we're...fake...fighting). And it comes up not infrequently because I find hues like turquoise and aquamarine to be delightful colours, and often choose things that are that colour...and then my kids ask me what colour it is and make fun of me.
And also because sometimes I choose something I swear is green to wear on St. Patrick's Day and my kids will swear up and down that it's blue and will pinch me even though I swear that it's green.
Anyway, this is my [green-urquoise-blue] water bottle:
And this is my green threshold:
Or this...I took it more than once. Either way, turquoise is green to me.
*****
Updated to add:
Is it a game for me to see if I can hit hue 180 (the definition of cyan) perfectly? Maybe it is...

But I'm answering honestly each time I take the quiz! I just...show me a person where the box says "for you turquoise is blue" because I just don't know it's possible to get that result...because turquoise is green.
Wait, I did it! I totally lied and answered that things were blue when I thought my kids might tell me they were blue and I ended up with it telling me that my turquoise is blue. But, like...I definitely do not agree with the responses that gave me this result.
It's turquoise and very blue. But blue/green color blindness is a thing. Mostly males, but a very small fraction of females have it. It can have a genetic or environmental basis.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it would be colourblindness for me (I do fine on color vision tests) as much as it simply accounts for individuality in colour perception. I would definitely put this turquoise somewhere between what I would consider a true blue and a true green, but to me it seems to fall on the green side of things (but I tend to count more hues as green than the average person does—not that I can't see the difference in the colours...they just "give green" to me).
DeleteThat bottle looks blue to me, but I realize computer screens can make colors appear differently than they are in person.
ReplyDeleteOn the test, I got
Your boundary is at hue 167, greener than 86% of the population. For you, turquoise is blue.