My name is Kendall, and I am the oldest child of Dave and Janelle Duncan’s 2 children. My sister Rebekka is 18 months younger than I am, and when this story begins I was almost 8 and Bek was 6 and a half. I guess my dad knew that eventually I would be curious enough that he would have to tell me the truth of why he and mom wore really weird and strong looking glasses sometimes. Mom wore glasses all of the time, but dad only wore glasses on certain days. And most of the days that dad wore glasses, they were just ordinary glasses, but they still looked pretty strong. The glasses that mom wore all of the time didn’t look to be nearly as strong as dad’s did, but mom never went without her glasses like dad did sometimes. And then, on the weekend when they went out and Bek and I were looked after by a baby sitter the glasses that they both wore were really kind of weird looking. Their glasses both had very small circles in the middle of the lenses. Sometimes the following day dad would wear the same glasses he had worn the previous night, but mom generally wore her normal ones. I finally decided to ask my mom about the different glasses she and dad wore, but she just told me that she and dad would explain it to me later when they were together. That night after supper and the other household chores were finished Bek and me and mom and dad all sat together in the living room while dad told us a story. Apparently, dad did not need glasses at all, but mom was pretty nearsighted. Dad had fallen in love with mom, not just because she wore glasses, but because she was very attractive and also wore glasses with a fairly strong prescription. When they got married mom had worn glasses that had around a -9D prescription, but now after 10 years of marriage and 2 children her glasses had increased in strength up to -12D. Dad’s interest in glasses had taken him to the Internet, where he found some websites that were devoted to glasses and glasses wearers. On one of these websites he had found that some people who did not need glasses could wear glasses of whatever power they wanted to wear as long as they put contact lenses of the opposing power into their eyes first. These contacts had to match the power of the glasses the person wanted to wear, and the contacts had to be fitted by an optician. For a person that did not wear contacts, the only way they could get contacts fitted was to go to an optician and have the optician fit colored contacts to get the proper fit for their eyes. Dad and mom did it a different way though. Mom went for an eye exam and dad bought her contacts that were properly fitted to her eyes. Then dad explained to the eye doctor that he thought that if he wore plus contacts he could try to wear mom’s glasses so he could see exactly just what she saw with and without glasses. Dad convinced the doctor to fit and order him the proper contacts, and when he had the right contacts he found an online place where he could order contacts of different powers from that were the proper fit. By the time Bek and I were born both dad and mom had contacts that they could wear much stronger glasses over. Mom thought that this was a strange hobby at first, but because dad was getting so much enjoyment out of going out to different malls and going shopping wearing his strong minus glasses mom went along with him, and eventually she found that she enjoyed wearing really strong myodiscs and being out in public fooling people. Dad told us he didn’t care so much that he was fooling people into believing that he and mom both were extremely nearsighted, he just liked the feeling of looking through very strong minus glasses. Dad then told me that if I wanted to try to wear GOC, he was prepared and willing to let me try this experiment. I thought about his offer for a couple of days, and then I went to dad and told him I would like to try GOC. Of course, even though she didn’t really understand what all was going on, Bek was all for trying to wear glasses as well. Halloween was coming up in a couple of months, so the next step for dad was to take us to an eye doctor and have us fitted so that we could wear those contacts that made your eyes look all weird and scary. Once Bek and I had properly fitted costume contacts dad then ordered contacts from the internet for us, and then he got us both glasses. Dad seemed to know exactly what he was doing because once the contacts and glasses arrived and he and mom taught Bek and I how to insert the contacts in our eyes we were allowed to wear the glasses around the house. One day we all went to the mall as a family and I thought it looked a little strange to see mom and dad and Bek all wearing glasses with circles in the middle of the lenses. And then when I looked into a wall of mirrors and saw us all wearing the same type of glasses I thought it was really strange. The first few times I put the contacts in and the glasses on I got terribly dizzy and so did Bek. After a couple of hours the dizziness went away, and other than feeling that everything looked a lot smaller I found I could see as well with my GOC combination as I could with my own eyes. Bek took to GOC quite well also and she actually wanted to wear her glasses every day. I wanted to wear my glasses every day as well. I was in second grade now, and school had just started a month earlier. But I was afraid to just show up at school wearing my very strong glasses. One Monday mom took me to school and I was wearing my glasses. She explained to the teacher that I had been to see an eye doctor and my eyesight was very poor, and although I had been wearing contact lenses, my contacts had been bothering me so my eye doctor had forbidden me to wear contacts for a while. The teacher bought the story that mom told her and she moved me right up to the front row of desks. Now I could wear my glasses to school whenever I wanted to, and on days I didn’t feel like wearing glasses I could just tell everyone I was trying to wear my contact lenses again. Bek just went off to kindergarten the day she got used to wearing her glasses around the house, and as far as I know nothing was ever said. Now we were a family of glasses wearers. Mom was the only one who did not wear GOC every day, but her glasses were strong enough that I guess she didn’t feel the need to do so. At night, after she got home from work I know she would often put on her GOC and she and Dad would get all lovey dovey with each other. Whenever we went on holidays we would all wear glasses. Mom and dad would wear their strongest glasses, and Bek and I would wear the same ones we wore every day. As a family we went to Disney World in Florida, Knott’s Berry Farm in California as well as many other attractions there, and we also went to different cities and museums. Once in a while we would run across a family in which there was at least one member that wore very strong glasses like ours, and a discussion about eyesight and vision would occur. That is how I found out that dad wore glasses with a prescription of -40D and mom’s glasses had a prescription of -45D. Bek and I wore glasses with a -20D prescription, but Bek and I wore these as our only glasses. Both Bek and I liked wearing glasses so much we both wore them pretty well all of the time. I was around 13 and had worn my -20D glasses for 5 years at this time. Both my glasses and Bek’s glasses were getting pretty old and dad figured it was time for new ones. Before dad could get us new glasses he wanted to take us both in for eye exams and that meant Bek and I had to go without glasses for a few days. The first couple of days that I didn’t wear my glasses were terrible. I had headaches and I had trouble focusing. But Bek seemed to have more trouble than I did, as she didn’t seem to be able to see very well and her vision didn’t improve as the days went by. Our eye exams were for the Monday after we had a week of school holidays, so we ended up at the doctor’s office having our eyes checked. Dad was surprised with the results of Bek’s eye exam. She had developed -5D of myopia so it was no wonder that she couldn’t see very well. Dad couldn’t figure out why she had seemed to be seeing all right with her GOC combination, but he eventually figured out that somehow or another the strong GOC combination had masked the fact that her eyes had developed a decent amount of myopia on their own. He also felt that possibly Bek was not really as nearsighted as the eye exam had showed, but because she was used to seeing through the strong lenses her eyes had tested as being able to take more minus that they would have if she had never worn the GOC. My vision without glasses was normal. Bek could have worn the same prescription with weaker contacts if she had wanted to. And I could have worn the exact same combination for a few more years. But Bek and I both felt we wanted stronger GOC combinations. Dad got Bek -30D glasses, but he only got me -25D glasses and that way we were both able to wear the same prescription contact lenses. These contacts were the strongest possible ones dad could get from the internet web site. I liked Bek’s glasses better than my own. She had circles in both sides of the lens, but my glasses only had the circles in the back and the front of my lens was dished in a little. Both mom and dad’s strongest glasses had the same double circles as Bek’s new glasses had and when I asked dad he told me they were called double myodiscs, while my new glasses were called biconcave myodiscs. As long as my own eyes didn’t develop any myopia on their own I would have to stick with this prescription because the contacts that mom and dad wore were not readily available on the internet and dad had to use an optician friend of his to order them directly from the manufacturer. During our school years Bek and I both had to take a bit of flack over our poor eyesight and our thick glasses. But we both enjoyed wearing them so much that it really didn’t bother either one of us. I was now 18 and was graduating from high school, still wearing my -25D myodiscs. No, not the same ones I got when I was 12, because dad had made sure that Bek and I got our eyes examined every year after it was discovered that Bek was nearsighted. My eyesight was still 20/20, and I got new glasses every couple of years. Bek, on the other hand, had her own eyesight deteriorate significantly every year, and she had gotten weaker contacts to wear under her -30D glasses every year until finally last year she could wear her -30D glasses with no contacts under them. Her real prescription was still about 3 or 4 diopters lower than her glasses prescription but she could see just fine without any contacts and she didn’t really care if her stronger glasses made her eyes a bit worse. I wouldn’t have minded if I had inherited mom’s myopia like I was pretty sure Bek had. Bek’s eyesight had gotten a lot worse than mom’s was, but we couldn’t really be sure if Bek would have had just as bad eyesight if she had never done GOC. I was going to have to make a decision. It was a little tiresome putting in my contacts every day so I could wear my glasses. Next year I was going off to college, so it would be a perfect time to show up without glasses. I had not made a decision one way or the other, and even if I no longer wore my -25D’s on a daily basis I would still be able to wear my GOC combination whenever I came home to visit mom and dad and Bek. We would still be a GOC family. Specs4ever June 2016