Life is full of unexpected things - at least it seems that way for me. Some times those unexpected events can drastically change the direction and perhaps the duration of life. Yogi Berra once said "If you come to a fork in the road, take it." (if you are not familiar with Yogi - google his quotes...very funny and profound too).
The insightful part of his quote is that if you don't make a conscious choice on which fork, then life will make it for you - and you never know where that fork of the road is going to take you.
When I was in my senior year of engineering at West Virginia University, I had one of the all time brain farts I've ever had. I decided during my last semester of school, that I wasn't really cut out to be an engineer, and I quit college. Now that happens millions of times to many people - so what's the big deal? Well..this was during the height of the Vietnam war. I had what was called a student deferment, and that meant I could not be drafted as long as I maintained my good standing as a full time student.
I can't really explain why I did what I did.....it makes absolutely no sense to me at all now looking back. Truly, I was unhappy at school, and not doing very well. In fact, my first semester of my senior year I achieved an amazing 0.7 GPA (out of 4.0) pulling an F in every single class except for at C- in Psychology. If I'd done better in psych I'd have probably realized just how crazy I was and had myself committed.
The other extraordinary fact surrounding me quitting school, was my lottery number. No...not the kind you win money at but the kind that can get you killed. During the war they decided to create a lottery that determined whether you got drafted or not. So, at the beginning of each year they would pull one of those numbered ping pong balls out of an air-induced blizzard for each day of the year. Your birthdate would get assigned that number, and they would call people up for the draft in that order. If your lottery number was less than around 200 you had a very good chance of being drafted. Mine was 9 which was a sure ticket to Vietnam.
So, those crafty people in Uncle Sam noticed right away when I withdrew from school in May, and since my number was long passed, they sent me a very short induction notice. I had moved back to Huntington and was staying with my parents when I got the letter, and one week later I was a the induction center in Ashland, Kentucky with about 50 other very scared young men. We knew we were in real trouble, and that Vietnam was our next stop...and that there was a very good chance we'd be coming home in a body bag.
Before I describe what the induction process is like, I need to go back a year and tell you a different but related story. My dad worked for the IRS, and so had many friends in both state and federal government. In the summer before I quit school, he said he could help me get a summer job in the Army Corp of Engineers. They paid more than twice what I could make as a minimum wage job, and so I was of course very interested. The only thing is that I still had to follow the procedures and meet the minimum requirements before my dad's friend could offer me the job. The minimum requirement was for me to achieve a passing grade on the civil service intelligence exam. To say the standards were low would be quite an understatement. I know some dogs that would be able to pass that test.
The test had 1,000 multiple choice questions - and none of them had anything to do with actual intelligence. I'm a good test taker, and so was not concerned in the least about getting the minimun passing grade that would get me to a great summer job. So...I came in one Saturday morning to take the six hour exam. The questions were easy, and all was going well until I got to the last question. I filled in the little bubble for the correct answer on on the last question, and then realized that I was only on question 999 on the answer sheet. I was shocked, and realized that I'd skipped a question somewhere along the line and so was one off in answering the questions. I was in a panic to find where I'd made the mistake....and decided to go backwards through the questions to find where I'd gotten out of sequence. I never did find it, and ran out of time somewhere around question 800.
When my dad asked me about the test, I said that it hadn't been too hard..but I was too ashamed to tell him that I'd messed up the answer sheet somehow. I was hoping that I made the error late in the test, and that I'd still get a good enough score. That hope was dashed when my dad came home from work on Monday. He told me that his friend had "previewed" my results, and that I'd basically achieved moron status. He was pretty unhappy and my dad was very embarrassed. I tried to explain to dad what had happened, but he wasn't much in a mood to listen..and just told me that I was not allowed to retake the test for six months, and so that there was no way they could give me the job. I could also see the questioning look in his eyes...was I really a moron after all?
So..back to my draft induction process. The process took a whole day, and included both the normal drop-your-drawers-turn-your-head-and-cough check, and some intelligence testing. At this time, several friends of mine had gotten out of being drafted by tanking the intelligence test on purpose. Basically they'd been deemed too stupid to be drafted. They all encouraged me to take the same approach to the test, but my dad told me the opposite. He said that if I did really well on the test, they might give me some other assigment than just being a grunt on the ground in Vietnam - and maybe save my life. So, I decided that I'd give the test my best effort, and hope for a survivable assignment once I got drafted.
I took the test, and it actually was pretty hard. I had to guess on several questions, but got done well before time expired. So, I turned it in, and sat back down at my desk and waited. The sargeant administering the test would take each completed form into the back room and run it through a reader. He took mine, headed back to get it scored, and then came back out again with a funny look on his face.
He said very loudly "OK boys, which one of you is Hank Queen?". I was startled to hear him call my name and raised my hand slowly. He walked over to me, and stared down. He started asking me a whole string of questions. Like "Did you graduate from high school? What kind of grades did you make? Did you ever attend college?" I knew right away where he was headed. I figured that somehow I'd made a mess of the answer sheet again, and had gotten moron level scores on the test again. He was trying to understand if I was really that dumb, or just faking it for the test.
I stammered as I said "I think I know what you are doing, and I promise I did not mess up the test on purpose." He held up his hand to stop me, and said "What in the hell are you talking about son?. I just wanted to meet you in person because you scored the highest anyone has ever done on this test in our four state area." I guess the fear of death had inspired me to guess right on a bunch of questions. But I have to admit that I felt pretty good at that point and felt the hope grow in my heart that maybe I'd survive the war after all.
The physical part of the examinations was just silly. Pretty much all you had to do was still be breathing to pass. So, I finished the day with a piece of paper in hand stating that I'd passed all requirements, and would receive my formal induction notice within two weeks. I went home tired, but a little less scared than I'd begun that morning...and knew that in two weeks my life would be changed forever.
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