Hahahaha...one of the greatest days of my life was when my mother took me at the age of 16 (my dad had retired and we moved back to his hometown) to a nearby Army base to get a pair of wire-rimmed glasses! (I asked for them as a birthday present)
I was going to a new high school as a junior that fall, and she took pity on me. She even spent the money to get the stuff in them that made the lens dark when you went in the sun. It was pretty new technology at that time.
However, as I had done so many times before, I shattered one of the lens, and when they ground me a new lens, they didn’t put the right amount of the stuff in, so when I went out in the sun, one lens became very dark and the other one, not so much.
It made me look much like Dr. Strangelove!
When I went to the AAFEES Station in downtown Boston after enlisting in the Navy, they weren’t going to let me in with those glasses, but since I had enlisted in the Buddy System with my best friend, I didn’t want him to go on without me, and the doctor let me in.
Then, when I was in boot camp at Great Lakes, we were getting fitted for uniforms, and the rule was to sit silently with no talking. Of course, my buddy began talking to me, and when I snapped at him in a hoarse whisper “Shut up! We aren’t supposed to talk!” the sailor giving out uniforms saw me and said:
“YOU! SPOT DOG! GET UP HERE.”
I went to the front, he grabbed my new utility hat off my head, stuck the brim in my mouth and for the rest of that hour, I stood motionless at attention while the sailors handing out uniforms threw crumpled up paper, candy wrappers, you name it, into the hat. Boy, was I mad at my buddy that day!
Soon after they took away my glasses and gave me the infamous BCD glasses...and that was that!
Wore them on the Rifle Range, but that was about it.