The Plight of Ambiguously-Colored Eyes

I accidentally pushed "Publish" instead of "Save" while writing this, so it may have showed up in your feed in its incomplete form.  Oops.

It's been a while.  I've had my hands full with random obligations.  Last month I got called as the ward choir pianist.  Pshhhhh...  I know, right?  Piano isn't my best talent.  I only excel with tons and tons of practice.  And excel is a pretty generous word to use.  More like "crank it out somewhat acceptably" with tons of practice.  I got the music for our first song, and it's probably the most awkward piece of music I've ever played.  Neither the top nor bottom hand have any flow.  It's a bunch of random, notes.  Sigh.  Bless the poor choir.

I've also been working endlessly on report cards.  Yes.  Report cards for preschoolers.  It's crazy.  I get why they do it--they like to show parents that their kids are learning.  But as a teacher it's overwhelming.  I think I've spent a total of ten hours in the past week just on report cards.  And this is in addition to my normal in-class time.  I'm all preschool-ed out this week.  I'm so happy it's a long weekend so I can recoop.

On to the matter at hand.

Eye color is often categorized into four neat classes:  blue, green, brown, and hazel.  If you don't qualify for strictly blue, brown, or green you are labeled hazel.  Hazel is the catch-all of eye color.  The only thing people of this category have in common with each other is the ambiguity of their eye color.  If you do a Google image search for "hazel eyes" it comes up with a huge variety of eye colors that range from brownish to greenish.  Some are a murky yellowish-brown, or brownish-green, and some I would consider mostly green or mostly brown.  The vast majority have a certain degree of brownish, but then some have no trace of brown.  It's pretty bizarre that hazel covers such a huge range.

What color is hazel, anyway?  Wikipedia says, "Definitions of the eye color hazel vary: it is sometimes considered to be synonymous with light brown or gold, as in the color of a hazelnut shell."

When I was young, I was told I had hazel eyes.  And because I figured others could see my eyes better than I could, I believed them.  I even indicated "hazel" for eye color when I got my driver's license at age 15.  (True story--I'm an Idaho girl.)  And then when I was about 17 or 18 I took a close look at my eyes in the mirror and decided, "I think they were all wrong about my eyes."

I found that the color near my pupils is a combination of light and dark greens, and then it's rimmed by a dark blue.  There is no trace of brown at all.  No yellow either.  Mostly green with a dark blue rim.  This isn't hazel.

Take a look for yourself:

I made it nice and big so you can better analyze my eye color.  Pictures are a little tricky because they rarely capture the true essence of your eye color due to lighting, etc, but this one is kind of close.

So I decided to take charge of my eye color.  I, Lindsey, have green eyes.