What's it like to be colorblind?

There are a lot of websites dedicated to helping people with normal color vision understand what it's like to be colorblind.  They tend to do a good job of explaining that there are many different types of colorblindness, and sometimes they even get into what causes the various conditions.  They almost always have some sort of photo comparison section that purports to represent what a given image looks like to a person with one of a number of color anomalies.  They very in accuracy, but none of them are ever spot-on for me.  If they exactly represented the way I see colors, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the images, but I always can.

I am, in the least technical possible terms, partially red/green colorblind.  I can see red, and I can see green.  The line between them is a bit blurred, and sometimes I can't detect them at all when their presence is subtle.

It mostly affects my ability to play puzzle games--in Puzzle Bobble, for example, I occasionally have trouble distinguishing between yellow and orange bubbles or (more rarely) blue and purple ones.  The little creatures inside the bubbles are there partially to help folks like me tell the difference.

I'm very bad at distinguishing subtle changes in skin color.  When a person has a slight rash or is blushing, I won't notice.  I literally can't see it unless it's very dramatic.

One time when I was working at a gas station, I complimented a customer's car, noting that it was a really interesting shade of purple.  It was dark green.

I used to have a pair of slacks that was sort of a pale green color.  I thought they were grey for years.  My mom would berate me for not knowing how to match my clothes because I would wear colors that looked really awful together.  She said she felt really bad when we found out that I just wasn't able to perceive the colors normally.  I don't hold it against her, though.

But here's the real deal.  Here's what it's actually like to be colorblind.

Everything is going normally, I'm hanging around with some friends, and somehow or other it becomes apparent that I'm colorblind.  Rarely, it's because I mention it outright.  More often, it's because somebody else mentions it.  Then something very predictable happens:

Everyone who didn't previously know about my colorblindness wants to know what color their shirt is.

If I play along, I'll be answering color-related questions for at least 15 to 20 minutes.  At the end of that time, everyone will be completely unsatisfied because I'll have correctly identified the color of everything they throw at me.  Usually I will just say, "Your shirt is [insert color here], I can see colors, I just don't see them quite the same way you do."  That's usually enough to give the (correct) impression that I'm not interested in playing a game based on my ability to see color.  Sometimes it's not enough, though, and someone persists in trying to find something--anything--whose color I can't correctly identify.

They want me to tell them what color the sky is.  The sky is fucking blue.  What, did you think that I knew that your jeans were blue, but I think the sky is orange?

Maybe I say, "Blue isn't an issue.  I'm partially red/green colorblind.  I have trouble telling the difference between very similar shades of red and green."  Then they want to know what color grass is.  Grass is green, dude.  It's green.  What do you want me to say?

And so, with this type of person, I almost always have to say something regrettable:

"Please stop pressing me for details on my disability."

I don't consider myself disabled.  I'm fully mobile, I like to think that I'm of above-average intellectual ability, I can see and hear and speak.  But I lack the ability to differentiate between subtly different shades of some colors.  It's an extremely minor disability, but a disability nonetheless.  And the fact that it's so minor almost makes it worse that they won't let it go.  It doesn't affect me in my daily life, and so it sure as hell doesn't affect them.  If I needed special accommodation because, for example, I had spina bifida, it would actually be much more understandable that they would want some idea of the extent of my abilities.  But with mild, partial colorblindness, the only reason to keep pushing me for explanation (which is difficult to provide) is the novelty of it.

It shouldn't bother me, but it does, and it's probably because I've had the same conversation a hundred times.  It's so predictable, and I know how it ends: you still don't understand the way that I see, and I'm not surprised.