By my third year at Penn State it was clear that I wasn’t doing well.

More than clear.

In a better world I would have paused and taken stock and tried to decide what it was I wanted to do.

Not that I was doing poorly in every class. I got an A in the History of the English Language (which I loved), but that was pretty much negated by the F I got in a Shakespeare course (which I have no memory of). That same term I got a C in Sociology (the prof kept telling anti-Eisenhower jokes and I liked Ike). Later on I took an advanced math course, despite my difficulty with integral calculus, and ended up with an A in Analytical Geometry and Calculus (no memory of the content of that course other than I recall taking it).

I had several problems. The faculty advisors that I was assigned really didn’t give me any useful advice, in fact the very first one made it clear he didn’t want to see me, ever; he was a philosophy prof. I wasn’t good at taking notes during lectures, and I didn’t have good study habits. Worse, my attention tended to wander, and once I lost interest in a course, it was hard for me to focus on it.

But my biggest problem was that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And I kept switching majors. I started as a Liberal Arts major. Then I switched to English. Then to, well, I forget. I thought for awhile I might want to be a teacher. So I took a psychology of teaching course. Say, did you know that if you fill two glasses, one tall and thin, the other short and squat, and filled the shorter one with a larger quantity of water and then asked a five year old to decide which one had more water, the five year old would pick the taller one? But just one year later that same kid would realize that the short squat glass actually had more liquid? I actually tried that experiment on my five year old cousin Markie. (After all this time I might have the ages wrong, maybe it’s six and seven, but you get the idea, I’m sure.)

But who did I want to teach? Grade school kids? No way. High schoolers? Maybe. But what subject? When I really thought about it for more than two seconds, I realized I didn’t really want to teach.

But what did I want to do? I just didn’t know.

The problem was, if I dropped out of school, I’d lose my student deferment. And there was a war raging over in the jungles of Vietnam.

Even in peacetime, I didn’t think the military and I would mix very well. From all I knew about it, the idea of taking arbitrary orders just didn’t appeal to me at all, and now that this country was in the middle of a war (that I didn’t support), well, the thought of being drafted was not something that I wanted to think about. And while some people enlisted in one branch of the service or another, which gave them a certain amount of leeway to choose what they wanted to do, as I said, the military life just didn’t seem like a good option for me.

So I wanted to keep my deferment as long as possible. Preferably until the war ended. Although given the way it was going, the end didn’t seem to be in sight.

And then the draft lottery was announced in the fall of 1969.

The idea was that everyone born between certain dates (and my birthdate fit in those dates) would be given a number that was drawn by lot. Those who got numbers above a certain value (I think it was something like 190) would likely never be called up by the draft, but those unlucky ones with lower numbers would be called up in numerical order.

So this seemed like a possible way out of the problem—if I got a high number.

While we were waiting for the numbers to be drawn, the most annoying guy on our dorm floor decided to start a pool. Anyone who wanted to could put in five bucks and whoever won the lottery would get the proceeds. I decided to chip in. There was only one problem and nobody thought to ask.

Anyway, the big day came and the numbers were drawn and printed in the paper.

My number was—wait for it—fourteen.

That’s a one followed by a four.

14.

Well short of the 190 or whatever number I needed to be safe from the draft.

My heart sank.

As it turned out, I had the lowest number on the fifth floor of Mifflin Hall.

To make matters worse, the most annoying guy on the dorm floor, the guy who was running the lottery pool, claimed to have the highest numbered birthdate and he claimed the winnings.

You see, nobody had thought to ask what the rules of the lottery pool were. Would the winner be the one who got the highest or the lowest number? And did anyone verify his birthdate?

Tom, the fellow in the room next to mine, was commiserating with me about my bad luck with the low number and about the annoying guy claiming the winnings.

“I’d have even preferred that you had won rather than him,” said Tom.