Saturday, November 28, 2020

Birth Control Glasses

 One of the things that every Navy sailor or veterans knows about is the curious case of Navy-issued glasses, known to sailors as "Birth Control Glasses" or "BCG."

Somehow these nerdy glasses became hip in the 2000s, a great testimonial to the overwhelming power of Millennials and follow-on generations to enjoy what their predecessors abhorred and detested.

Upon arrival to boot camp, one of the first things confiscated - if you wore glasses - were your nice, hopefully cool "civilian" glasses. They were almost overnight replaced with BCGs, which had the magical power of turning anyone, no matter how beautiful or handsome, into an immediate geek, not worth procreation.

Therefore, one of the first things that most sailors then did upon graduation from boot camp was to head to the Navy Exchange, find the eye doctor, and order some "civilian" glasses. Only those unfortunately born to be nerds, kept their BCGs, and I suspect that the BCGs and their original glasses were quite similar.

When I was stationed in San Diego in the late 1970s, our gang of squids and leather necks used to have as part of our group a Third Class Hospital Corpsman (HM3) who worked at the medical facility next to the San Diego boot camp area, which I think also served the Marine Corps boots in the Marine base on Barnett Avenue next to the Navy base then in Point Loma and now closed for many years.

This HM3 managed to have access to all the BCGs that boots would discard when they got their civilian glasses at the Point Loma base, and he'd rescue them from the garbage dumps and save them in a box.

Why would an HM3 save BCGs by the dozens each week you ask?

Each weekend, my then girlfriend Andrea, who was the only one among us losers who actually had a car, would pack her Toyota with my friends and I and drive us to the border with Mexico, where we'd head for Tijuana, or "TJ" as sailors call it, for a night of drinking and fooling around - is was essentially the only option for the under 21 crowd, as back then the only place around San Diego where a Navy sailor under 21 could get a drink was at the Enlisted Club on base (weird to think that back then a sailor could drink booze on base, but not out in town if you were under 21).

Going to the Enlisted Club deserves another story... suffice to say that usually there were usually a few hundred sailors and Marines in there and four women. If you brought a girl to the club, you better be ready to fight a few dozen drunks messing with your girl every few minutes.

So we'd go to TJ, and Andrea (who was perhaps the nicest person whom I've ever met) would drop us off at the border crossing and either agree to pick us up early the next day... or sometimes wait in the parking lot while she studied (she was in college).

When I say nice, I mean super nice!

We'd then head to the border crossing and once in Mexico hail a taxi.  As most of us were usually busted a few days after payday, the "in-betweens" is where the BCGs came into play.  First we'd hail a taxi and - since I spoke Spanish - I'd explain to the cab driver that we'd trade him a few pairs of prescription glasses for a ride to town.

That's some of us in the pic below...

It always worked - every single time! A few times (to my surprise) the driver would even start trying glasses until he found his prescription - that always left a bit of squirm in the pit of your stomach to realize that the driver needed glasses and didn't have any until that point.

At the bar(s) we'd bring out the box and start trading drinks for glasses... with the bar tender, with the bouncers, with the bar girls, with the customers... essentially with anyone interested... and who needed glasses.

It always worked!

The trick was to estimate (and we got good at it) how many glasses we'd need at one or two o'clock in the morning when we'd need them to get a cab back to the border crossing.

And that's how discarded BCGs bought all kinds of things in trade for a bunch of broke-ass American sailors in search of a drink!