There was a scholastic book fair at my son’s preschool. On Wednesday, September 29th, Back to School Night, I visited the book fair and purchased 4 books. Doggone Dogs, Too Many Dogs, Goldilocks and The Three Bears, and Naughty Little Monkeys.
I have been reading him 3-4 of the books every night since then. He always chooses to start with Doggone Dogs. I read the title, I read the author’s name, and illustrator. On one of the beginning pages there is a picture of 5 dogs lined up by height in descending order. Every night Tyler points to each dog and tells me what color collar they have. Red, red, red, green, blue. He points to the blue one and says it’s green. I tell him, no baby, that one is blue. Then I correct him when he says the green one is blue. After a few days of this, I started thinking maybe he’s color blind. My mom, a former nurse, had previously told me that colorblind people have a hard time distinguishing between blue and green. I’m getting more and more worried every day he calls blue, green. I want to tell myself that maybe its just because the collars are small but that conversation with my mom keeps ringing really loudly in my head. Finally, Friday October 8th, we start our same routine. I sit on his bed. He sits in between my legs. He holds the book and I read. I read, Doggone Dogs, by Karen Beaumont, pictures by David Catrow. He turns the page. We get to the page with the fateful, collared dogs. Again, just the same as all the other days, he points to the doggies and says red, red, red, then, as I hold my breath and time moved like slow motion, Tyler points to the blue collar and says green. My heart sunk and, in my mind, I let out a huge disappointed sigh. I couldn’t say anything. When time moved again, Tyler pointed to the blue collar again and said green. I still couldn’t respond. He turned and gave me a look that let the whole cat out the bag. He knew that blue collar wasn’t green and was waiting for me to say something before he could move on. I let out a loud, raucous laugh. I said, “you know that collar isn’t green”! He laughed really hard with me.
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