Snakes Without
Colors
by Zach Smith
They taught us in
boy scouts how to tell if a snake was poisoned.
Red touches yellow kill’s a fellow, red
touches black friend of Jack (or in this case
Zach). Or is it Red touches yellow friend of a
fellow and red touches black kills Zach. I have
trouble remembering, but it doesn’t matter
because I don’t know what red and yellow are.
I was playing
catch with my father in my grandmother's backyard.
The ball we were using was bright day-glow orange,
or so I've been told. At one point I didn’t
catch the ball and it rolled into the grass. I
could not find it, even though it was right at my
feet, or as they say: if it was a snake it would
have bit me.
For five minutes
my dad told me the ball was right there in front
of me and he thought I was joking, until I got
frustrated and sat down, not wanting to play
anymore.
They took me to an
eye doctor, who showed me Ishihara Slides, made
up of dots of (apparently) different colors.
Usually these slides have numbers hidden in them,
however since I was so young at the time, they
actually had pictures of animals. I could see the
cow, and the snake, but not much else.
“Your son is
colorblind,” said the ophthalmologist.
No kidding.
“There's
blood everywhere,” I told my mom, after
walking out of the bathroom in the doctor's
office.
She checked, but
all she saw was the marble finish with pronounced
blue veins.
A few months later,
we took dugout canoes on the Great Barrier Reef.
“Why are
there so many candy canes in the water?” I
asked.
“Zach,”
she said. “There aren't any candy canes.”
I didn't want to
be wrong, so I reached in and grabbed what turned
out to be a Simoselaps or one of the ultra
poisoning black and white Australian Coral Snakes.
Nothing happened
of course, I must have been predestined.
White touches
black, that's not in the Boy Scout Handbook. But
it must have been in the Mom handbook because she
threw my candy cane back into the sea.
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