Senior year at Duke, for some reason the local TV stations weren’t going to broadcast the lottery from the start. So we listened live on the Duke radio station for the first 30 minutes, until TV coverage started. They got to about No. 65 by then. I was feeling kinda OK because the projection was they’d draft up to approximately No. 150 that year.
So I had to pull out another beer, hit the head, gab with some guys down the hall, before settling in front of the TV. By then they were at about No. 85, and it was getting better for me…..or so I thought. They eventually went to commercial and when they came back, they ran through a summary of what happened right from the start. Much to my utter dispair, I found out my birthday had been selected while I was working my way to the TV: No. 77! What a "bummer" as we used to say.
So I wound up enlisting in the Navy as an officer (got Supply Corp), went to Vietnam, was extremely lucky, and actually only spent 2 years total in the military (1 year at OCS & Supply Corps School, then 1 year in Mekong Delta & Saigon). I was LUCKY!