Wednesday, September 07, 2011

I have hazel eyes.

I don't base my identity on my eye color. Having hazel eyes is just a part of me. I'm certainly not proud of having hazel eyes, but I'm not ashamed, either. Most of the time, I don't even think about it.

But if the government told me I couldn't get married to someone else with hazel eyes, or that I couldn't be in the military unless I wore blue contact lenses, or if people stood outside my eye doctor's office with signs that read "Hazel-Eyed Go To Hell!," I might start to think that my hazel eyes were pretty important. I might start to resent people who disliked me just because of my eye color. I might start spending more time than is necessarily healthy wondering what it was about my eye color that got certain people so riled up.

I might get angry when people said absurd or bizarre things, like that I shouldn't be able to teach children unless I wore sunglasses to hide my "condition."

But that would never happen, right?