Your Status Drifts Like the Waves of the Sea

One grim Tuesday in fifth grade, our entire class was herded into the nurse’s office for the Ishihara Colorblind Test—a bright little carnival of humiliation disguised as medical science. Each of us took turns peering into a glowing lens, where we were supposed to spot numbers hidden in a mosaic of pastel dots. My classmates breezed through like they were decoding divine messages. I, however, saw nothing but decorative oatmeal.

The nurse grew impatient. “Can’t you see anything?” she barked, her voice slicing through the sterile air like a paper cut. The class erupted in laughter. My fate was sealed: I was the day’s designated leper, the monochrome freak in a Technicolor world.

At lunch, I sat alone with my half-eaten cheeseburger and tater tots, brooding over my sudden fall from grace. “Why,” I asked my internal life coach, Master Po, “is everyone making such a big deal about me being colorblind?”

“Do not worry, Grasshopper,” he said in that maddeningly tranquil voice. “Today you are mocked, but by tomorrow you will be first picked at kickball, for your mighty legs will send the ball over the fence. People’s judgments are like waves upon the sea—brief, noisy, and forgotten.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I said. “Teddy Leidecker smelled like pee in kindergarten, and he’s still called Pee-pee Teddy. That wave’s been breaking for five years straight.”

“Nature does not hurry,” Master Po said serenely, “yet everything is accomplished in its time.”

“Try telling that to Teddy Leidecker,” I muttered.

“You must not manage the gardens of others,” he said. “You have your own plot of weeds to clear.”

“Really encouraging, Master.”

He nodded. “You must clear them to reveal your original nature.”

“What if my ‘original nature’ isn’t that great?”

“Even if you dislike yourself,” he said, “you must nurture yourself. The sage helps even the repulsive.”

“So what you’re saying,” I said, “is that even when I do stupid things, I can be a moral lesson to myself?”

“Precisely, Grasshopper. You are blossoming before my eyes.”

“Yeah,” I said, stabbing a tater tot. “Into what, exactly—a dandelion?”