The first time I saw...
The first time I saw the color red I was playing a game of catch with Asher, with an apple I wasn't supposed to have taken from where the snacks were kept. We were just tossing it back and forth. Throw, catch, throw, catch. We'd done it so many times; just a way to pass the time, boring, even. And then, suddenly the apple changed. For a long time I couldn't describe it other than that it had changed. Just for a second, while it was in the air. I stopped and held it in my hands for a moment, tossed it from hand to hand. When I threw it back to Asher, there it was again, changed just for a second in the air.
It happened four times, and at first I thought something was wrong with my eyesight. I squinted and widened my eyes and tested things out: Yes, I could read the tiny print on my identification badge quite clearly, and I could see Asher perfectly at the other end of the schoolyard. And I had no problem catching the apple accurately. I asked Asher if he noticed anything different about the apple and he made a joke, saying that it jumped from his hands to the ground. He was never very good at things like catching and throwing.
But even though Asher hadn't noticed anything different, I knew that I had seen it. Whatever "it" was. I took the apple home with me. I inspected it using my magnifying glass, rolled it around my desk, trying to see the change happen again. It didn't. It wasn't until much later, after the faces changed at the Ceremony, after the Chief Elder told me I had the Capacity to See Beyond, that I began to think maybe only I could see it. And it was even longer before The Giver told me the name for what I had seen: the color red.
It happened four times, and at first I thought something was wrong with my eyesight. I squinted and widened my eyes and tested things out: Yes, I could read the tiny print on my identification badge quite clearly, and I could see Asher perfectly at the other end of the schoolyard. And I had no problem catching the apple accurately. I asked Asher if he noticed anything different about the apple and he made a joke, saying that it jumped from his hands to the ground. He was never very good at things like catching and throwing.
But even though Asher hadn't noticed anything different, I knew that I had seen it. Whatever "it" was. I took the apple home with me. I inspected it using my magnifying glass, rolled it around my desk, trying to see the change happen again. It didn't. It wasn't until much later, after the faces changed at the Ceremony, after the Chief Elder told me I had the Capacity to See Beyond, that I began to think maybe only I could see it. And it was even longer before The Giver told me the name for what I had seen: the color red.