"A year or so ago, I told y’all about how I managed to avoid getting married, eat some cake, and get on the road to better hearing, all in one evening. This week’s story is the tale of how a 54 year old man with better than average eyesight (for a 54 year old man) came to see fall colors for the first time, just this year. No, I didn’t spend the last 53 years blindfolded, locked in a cellar, in the tropics, or at one of the polar regions. The trick is, I was born with partial red-green colorblindness. I never really missed color acuity, except on the occasions when people commented on my pretty “peach” shirt, my “teal” car, or some such thing. (I actually thought for years that “teal” was a duck, or a shade of blue and that “peach” was a fuzzy fruit. Imagine my surprise to learn that they are really subspecies of pink and green.) Sometimes when wiring up something I’d have to ask my son Nick “hey does this wire look red, or green to you?” and trailing up archery shot deer by following blood that blended with leaf colors was a real challenge. Even so, I adapted and overcame.
Then came these nifty new glasses. I saw the ads, my family saw the ads, my friends saw the ads. My kids said “dad, get these and we won’t have to do CPR on you as often”. My friends said “get these and we won’t have to help you find your deer as often”. My co-workers said “get these and you won’t dress like a hobo as often”. Folks who have eaten my cooking at cookouts said: “get these and we will let you cook steaks and burgers for us”. The allure was growing.
One fine day, as the sun set in the clear teal sky, and the few clouds turned a lovely shade of peach, or plum, or mauve, or taupe, or beige, or off-yellow-ecru or something, I made my move. I logged onto the internet and found the website. Dang these things were expensive. Still though. Worth a thought. Next regular trip to my optometrist, I broached the topic. My optomistrist, who is about 13 years old, looked me straight in my rheumy, faded old blue (or teal or hazel or something) old eyes and said “oh you don’t need those”.
Me: “I don’t”? Her: “Well they’re pretty expensive” Now friends, if you follow my meandering in these tales, you’ll know by now, I make good money. I don’t make a LOT of it, but what I make is very good. That’s why everybody wants some of it. As my dear friend David-the-high-priced-lawyer says, I am a bit of a “cheap b##$%d”, but I can usually scrape up the price of a loaf of bread at the bakery outlet store. It’s hard to get me to come off a nickel, but the SURE way to do it, is to suggest that I can’t afford something. I’ll buy two. With the optional monogrammed display case, the repair kit, and the extended warranty. So, a few days later the great day arrived. My glasses came. I took them to my friend’s house, to share the moment. We went outside, we looked at stuff. Stuff looked awesome. There was red stuff, there was pink stuff, there was purple stuff. Lots of stuff was green. Green and purple weren’t what I’d thought they were. Teal was green. Who knew?! A man in a red Honda drove by. I pointed. “Red car ! “ I yelled The driver looked over, startled, then sped off. “Let’s go inside and watch TV” my friend said."
You can order them in your regular distance prescription, (can't get bifocal) or as plain sunglasses.
The company says that 70% of RG colorblind folks get good results. There's a money-back if they don't work.
I have decent distance vision, so ordered them as sunglasses ad wear mine AS sunglasses. I wear them riding motorcycle and driving. They are no different than a medium-dark sunglasses except I can see reds and greens oranges, pinks, purples and shades of same . I take them off and put on my regular glasses at dusk and when driving through tunnels. I wear them indoors when light levels are about 25-30 CP or higher. Anything under 20 CP it starts to "feel" dark.
I haven't done much with them at night except a "mock" bloodtrail exercise with Hunt's ketchup in leaves and grass with a good flashlight. Ketchup "glows" against grass and leaves with them on (the contrast I never had before). They are dark enough that you really can't wear them and see anything the light isn't on, at night.
I paid $330 for the "Wayfarer" style sunglasses without scrip lenses.
You can get your own glasses framed with them, (no clip ons which sucks) for about the same money. Getting new ones made with your eye scrip is about $400.
Mad Angler, I haven't had a real life blood trail to try yet, but on my Hunt's ketchup mock bloodtrail they worked well.
Glunt, I'm a lot like your son, I'm mostly wearing them as sunglasses when sunglasses are called for.
x-man, your friend's sons' experience seem to go along with the Enchroma claims.
Ken, I'm really sorry they didn't help you. The opportunity to see "real" reds and greens is amazing. I did a 500 mile (roundtrip) motorcycle trip a couple weekends ago and by the end of the first 200 mile leg through rural Virginia, I was in sensory overload. I was exhausted with seeing so much new color. I really DID get immediate results, but I think it took a few days to adjust to understanding the color nuances I was now seeing. Interesting'y, when I put them ON, reds and greens now "pop" at once. When I take them OFF, while looking at something green, red, pink, orange, it takes a few seconds for those colors to fade back to the duller shades I was seeing pre-glasses. It's like my brain "remembers" the correction for a little while. Weird.
Blood trailing is very difficult unless it is on snow.
Thanks for the heads up Fuzzy.
