Gary, Virginia, 1969. No. 031: Looking For An Out

I was a junior at Duke, and we were driving back from the double overtime victory over Virginia Tech at Greensboro when we tuned into the middle of the lottery on the radio. I recall hearing from about 150 until 365, and my birthday was not mentioned. Finally, they started again, and there I was: No. 31.

Like any good aspiring Duke grad student, the next day I went to the library to research the selective service regulations, looking for an out. Disfiguring acne? No. Severely underweight? No. My resting heart rate was always relatively high, and I learned that I could raise it above the medical limit of 100 bpm pretty much at will. I trotted over to Student Health to document my condition of tachycardia, and it turned out I also had high blood pressure (which I thought I was also controlling voluntarily).

When my draft physical came around, I took the bus to Raleigh and stripped and shuffled from station to station with the rest of the crowd. At the BP station, I watched the medic take my blood pressure, and it was NORMAL. I was terrified! My heart rate shot up to 164, and they held me afterwards and took it three more times. It never dropped below 144. I was sent back to Duke to have my BP recorded periodically, and I managed to keep it above the 100 bpm threshold. I-Y for me! The next year, as I recall, Nixon imposed a freeze on inductions in the final quarter of the year, and my draft board reclassified me to I-A without another physical exam. I think they reached No. 120 that year, but since I was No. 31, was I-A, and was not drafted, I was thereafter exempt.

As it turns out, the real problem with my blood pressure was my girlfriend. As soon as we broke up, my blood pressure dropped to normal, where it has stayed ever since.