I was at the University of Maryland, considering graduate work in math or history, and my number — which I do not remember — made it certain I would be drafted. I volunteered instead, hopefully for the army foreign language training program (Chinese, but my friends who went in told me that I would have been trained in Vietnamese and sent to interrogate people in the war). I bussed up to Baltimore for the physical, foolishly with a letter from my doctor that I didn’t have blood sugar problems, but the army didn’t want me — automatic disqualification for diabetes. My sharpest memory is the two other guys with me at the inspection station, both of whom were younger and clearly had put on women’s clothing in hopes of being disqualified. I was sent home, they were not. I went to grad school in Wisconsin.
