One of my best friends is colorblind. He has trouble seeing some colors and simply cannot see other colors at all. For example, he has no clue what red looks like. To him, all the apples, red vehicles, and fire trucks in the world are black. He has no idea what orange looks like either. He believes cheese and oranges are green. At least, he thinks it is green. There is really no way to tell.

I don’t find it humorous and I’m not making fun of him by any means. In fact, he even thinks it’s funny. It has, as you can probably guess, caused a lot of problems and unwanted confrontation. He lives in Whitesburg, and when I would go home for the weekend, he would catch a ride. I was more than happy to oblige. However, he would constantly tell his parents to look for a black truck, when clearly my vehicle is red.

Due to his vision problems, he has had to wait until now to get his license. In order to qualify, he had to ride with an instructor for over 30 hours, wear many different kinds of glasses, and stay in Lexington for a week. Anyways, he was riding with his instructor on the second day. After trying on about 70 pairs of glasses that have different effects, he found a pair that made everything pretty clear. There was only one caveat: He couldn’t see red. So, when the instructor asked him what he would do when he came to a stoplight, he replied, “I can see green and yellow perfectly. If I see those two aren’t lit up, I know it is a red light.” She told him that wouldn’t work. He tried on another pair of glasses. He couldn’t see green out of these, but he could see red. He told her that he couldn’t see green, and asked what he would do if he came to a stoplight. She said, “Well, you can see yellow and red. If those aren’t lit up, then it’s a green light.” Needless to say, my friend did not care for this instructor.

Another time, whilst in Morehead, I had a problem: I had this huge Foghorn Leghorn that I got from my little half-brother in Harlan County. It was the last day of school and I had nowhere to put it for the summer. So, my friend volunteered to take it home with him. His dad came and picked it up. Now, this Foghorn Leghorn was huge. It fit in the passenger seat with a seatbelt across his lap. On the way home, he stopped to get some KFC. (Ironic?) When he was close to his house, he was stopped by a state trooper, who must have been surprised and confused by the man with the huge chicken sitting in the passenger side with a seatbelt on and a bucket of KFC in its lap. He was searched by two state troopers and even Mr. Leghorn was taken out of the car and looked over for possible holes and cuts for which to store drugs. He was let go, of course, but we never forgot that. And I’m sure he didn’t either.

His dad gave me the chicken back a few weeks later and told me not to put the seatbelt on the chicken. I complied, and have yet to be stopped by police.

I know a lot of you expected me to fight Owen about abortion. Of course, I disagree with him, and that’s fine that he believes that way. But, I thought it’d be great if instead of talking about abortion, I talk about my colorblind friend and a giant chicken.

Cheers