This is my furriend Marshall!

Marshall was a little kitten when he came to my office to get glasses for the first time. Oh wait, that’s not right! I was the one who was a kitten. Marshall was what humans call a “toddler.”

Marshall loved his glasses and he never wanted to take them off. He loved being able to see well!

Marshall always saw colors a little differently from other kids. He knew all the names of the colors, but sometimes he couldn’t tell them apart.

When he was in first grade a special teacher tested him for color vision deficiency. The teacher showed him a bunch of dots and asked him what pictures he could see in the dots. He couldn’t see any pictures in the dots! Marshall thought his teacher was playing a joke on him.

Then Marshall found out that he has red/green colorblindness. He felt bad about it for a while. Sometimes when he used the wrong crayon for coloring, some kids would laugh. Which made him sad, because he knew his colors, he just saw them differently than other people and that made it hard to tell them apart.

When Marshall was 8, he came to my office to get new glasses and we talked about clip-ons for kids who are color-unaware. Marshall tried on some of mine and they helped him to see colors the way other people do! Marshall thought that was really really cool! On the way home he was surprised that all the grass was green and that the McDonalds sign had red on it!

Now Marshall uses his special clip-ons at school when he wants to make sure he is using the right colors.

But Marshall likes his regular vision too! He sees things differently and he likes the way he sees! Marshall’s eyes are special just like him!