Draft Dodger

On the unexpected occasion of my 60th birthday, I thought I'd write up a few of my Stories, while I can still remember (or make up) a reasonable portion of them, complete with entirely bogus, Photoshopped, or made up, images. None of the following may be terribly true or accurate, but it's how I remember it.

I started my Freshman year at UC Irvine on my eighteenth birthday. This made me all at once an official College Student, an "Adult", able to vote, and liable to be drafted and go to Vietnam. My birth year was the last one that was eligible to be drafted, before they instituted the Volunteer Army.

The draft had become a lottery, and they had one of those ping pong ball machines and everything. There were 365 balls in it, one for every birthday, and the lottery randomized who'd get called up. When they needed more guys, they'd call up all the guys with birthday number 1, then number 2, etc. My October 1st birthday was number 32 -- not as close to 365 as one could wish for...

There were no Student Deferments anymore, but UCI did have a Draft Office. Not really sure why. I guess they were passing out maps to Canada.

Oh, I should mention that in those days, I was skinny. *Really* skinny. You could literally watch my heart beat between my ribs.

So, before I found any Fateful Letters in the mailbox, I went to the Draft Office and asked the lady, "Just how skinny would a guy have to be to not get drafted?" She pulled out a reference chart and asked, "How tall are you?" "Six foot, two." She consulted her chart and said, "132 pounds".

I weighed 128 at the time. I really didn't think I was cut out for guns and jungles and Agent Orange and all (and I'm famously disrespectful of Authority), so I was prepared to go on a crash diet. But I didn't have to. I wouldn't be needing that map to Canada after all.

Fortunately for my fellow eighteen year olds, they were actually starting to pull out of Vietnam that year anyway, so they didn't call anybody up. But especially not *this* skinny kid.