Lincoln teen's life is filled with color after friends buy him special glasses

Zane Stubbendeck’s world is now bursting with color.

The green tint of a Sprite bottle, the bright yellow and red of a McDonald’s sign and the many glorious hues of a Nebraska sunset.

And it’s all because of an argument between the Lincoln teen and his buddy, EJ Soucek, a few years ago about whether there was a pink stain on Soucek’s sock. Stubbendeck couldn’t see it. His world had always been composed of gray, tans, browns and yellows.

“That’s what I’ve always lived with,” he said.

The discussion that day led to a test for color blindness — an issue that affects about 100,000 Nebraskans, 13 million people in the United States and 350 million worldwide — and a vow by Soucek that someday he was going to get his friend a pair of glasses to correct the problem.

That day finally arrived for Stubbendeck’s recent 19th birthday. Soucek and several friends pooled their money and bought Stubbendeck a $250 pair of EnChroma outdoor glasses, which help people with color blindness see color.

They hid them in a Burberry sunglasses case at the bottom of a Nike bag stuffed with wrapping paper.

“At first, it was really nerve-wracking,” Soucek said. “I didn’t know if they were going to work. I knew his color blindness was really severe.”

Stubbendeck was nervous, too, just because of all of the attention surrounding his surprise gift. A few seconds after putting on the glasses, his hands began to shake.

Then he began to cry.

“When you do put on the glasses, things start to fade into color out of the gray,” he said. “Seeing it slowly change was kind of a surreal moment. I looked over and saw a bright color. It was red, but I didn’t know it was red.

“No words can express it because I’d never felt that before.”

Several people recorded the emotional moment when Stubbendeck could see pinks, reds and greens for the first time. A social media post by Soucek’s sister, Alyssa Osorio, has almost 400,000 views.

The video caught the eye of EnChroma, which asked Stubbendeck if he would like to be a brand ambassador for the company.

They also gave him a pair of indoor glasses that Stubbendeck hates to take off, no matter how misty they get at the car wash where he works until he can figure out how to make it as a social media influencer.

EnChroma has told him that if he wears the glasses consistently, they can start to correct his vision. Stubbendeck isn’t sure how it all works, but he’s been more than willing to give it a try.

“Taking them off makes me feel like I’m missing out,” he said. “Whenever I take them off, it’s a little bit sad.”

He says he’s so grateful to his friends for a present he wished he would have known about long ago. It’s hard to describe being color blind, he says. But putting on the glasses is like flipping a switch. Everything turns vibrant and colors pop.

The day after giving Stubbendeck his present, Soucek took his fellow Lincoln Northeast graduate to the top of a parking garage to watch the sunset. They’d always been a favorite of Stubbendeck’s, because he could see the yellow. But that’s nothing compared to what he can see now with his glasses.

“I always told him I was going to get them for him, so I feel like I did a pretty good thing,” Soucek said. “He talks about it every time I’m with him. It’s definitely the most meaningful thing I’ve bought him. I’m glad I did.”

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