Almost three years ago Petra got her first pair of glasses. She’d been having fairly frequent headaches, which is what prompted the visit to the eye doctor, but she never was very consistent about wearing the glasses. The headaches went away and her eye checks at school were fine, so we all just more or less forgot about the glasses.

A couple of months ago, though, she started complaining about headaches again and her teacher mentioned that she’d been having a little trouble concentrating for long stretches on her school-work, so I took her in for another eye check. Her vision was actually better this time than it was when she was seven, but because of the headaches the optician recommended glasses anyway, at least for reading. So she chose some frames and we placed an order, and today I picked up her new specs.

I noticed when I took them out of the case that the new glasses were almost exactly the same as mine–the same brand and same style, only in black instead of blue. I hadn’t noticed that they were so similar when she chose them, probably because I was kind of in a hurry and just wanting her to pick some already. I did try a little to get her to choose a less expensive pair, but after trying on nearly every pair in the store she settled on the ones she just had to have and would not be dissuaded.

I have a little theory about this. People have always said that she looks very much like me, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the only ones that looked right to her on her face were the ones that she’s used to seeing on my face. See if you think I’m right: