The lottery certainly complicated my life. I was a senior at UNC, in love, and wanting to get married. However, the uncertainty of the lottery and draft caused us to postpone our plans.
When the lottery came along, and my number was relatively low, I didn’t know what to do. I heard from a friend that you could get a deferment if you were teaching school, so I started looking around for a teaching job, never mind that I had had zero education classes. Miraculously, I was hired in the small town of Rockingham, NC teaching sixth grade language arts. It was their first year of integration, and they were basically desperate for white male teachers.
Turns out teaching and I were a good match. I stayed there for five years, and met and married a different girl. We celebrated our 37th anniversary yesterday, so I guess you’d have to say the lottery was a GOOD THING for me.