VIDEO: Colorblind boy gets Enchroma glasses, sees color for the first time

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives--July 28, 2017

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I don’t know what’s going to happen today with Jeff Sessions, or that crooked IT guy, or the Russia investigation. But I don’t think any of it is more important than this:

Color blind since birth, the boy (who appears to be about 10, I’d say) is fitted for the first time with Enchroma glasses that allow him to see color. We don’t know the boy’s name, and I don’t suppose it’s really all that important.

There are some skeptics of this video, and they’re asking the same question that was obvious to me when I first watched it. How does he rattle off the names of all the colors on the balloons if he’s never seen any of them before? A lot of people are jumping from that to the cynical conclusion that the whole thing is fake. It’s clearly not fake. There’s no way a boy this age not only participates in such a hoax but pulls off all the emotion this convincingly.

The explanation offered by commenters on Facebook is that colorblind people learn to recognize different shades and tones such that they have an idea of what different colors on the spectrum might look like. It’s not the same thing as having seen them, but it’s enough that when you finally do see them for real you understand what you’re looking at.

I’m not colorblind and never have been, so I can’t exactly relate to it, but the explanation sounds plausible to me. It’s a lot more plausible than the idea this whole thing is fake.

What I really like about the video, though, is not so much his reaction to the colors - as cool as that is - but the obviously gratitude and love you see exchanged between the father and the son. The dad is kind of trying to play it cool, and at first talks to the son in somewhat formal language. “Put your glasses on, son.” But once the son’s gratitude causes him to be overcome with emotion and he throws his arms around his dad, the dad loses it too.

You want to think this is fake? I bet you hate puppies too.

Take your eyes off Washington once in awhile and take in some of the wonderful things that are going on in the world around you. There’s a lot bad, too. But there’s this. This is really good.