This is not howit's supposed to be.

[SGTsickcall]

This is not how it was supposed to be. I had dreams and plans and expectations. I was just out of high school, smart, capable and mature for my age heading to college on a scholarship. The college was a very good one, a place where I could learn and have a professional degree, and yet soon, too soon, I was feeling out of place. I didn’t seem to fit anywhere but writing class. Flunking all my required classes and getting an A from an advanced writing class. Professor Stephanile let us right anything we felt like writing and there was only one real hurdle. “Spell my name wrong and I’ll flunk you” he said. He was a natty bohemian, wearing wool solely, usually a beret and a scarf, he provided a breath of fresh air in that cold crushing atmosphere that was college. I’ll never misspell his name whereas, I can’t remember the names of most other instructors, adjunct professors and professors I encountered.

Despite my parents’ dire warnings of the draft, I went to work instead of returning to University that fall. I worked in a hot dirty factory, where even my blood began to smell of iron and rust. It was hard blue color work, the kind of work my family had done since the small farms began to be unsupportable a generation earlier. There was some liberation here, no more worrying about homework, midterms and final exams. I could be my own man, buy a used Corvair and drink as much beer as I wanted. It’s not that I was a heavy drinker, after all The White Front Tavern featured quarter draft; it’s that I felt free, able to breath and have my own destiny. That was true until I received my notice to report for a draft physical.

The draft physical was 90 miles away from my little town and I road the Greyhound, which was much more a middle class thing to do than it has been of late. I sat beside a man, older than me, who pointed out every Volkswagen, along the way and identified its model year by the subtle changes of each. When he got off the bus, I sat quietly alone, noticing the stock trucks filled with sheep and cattle passing us on the highway, the stock heading for the slaughter house. I could relate.

The draft physical was in an Armed Forces Examining and Enlistment Station (AFEES), a huge building full of marble, marble floors, marble walls, marble restrooms. The staff were in lab coats over their regular clothing and comfortable in the 60 degree heat of the room. They were up and moving around. Were we’re sitting in our briefs on those marble benches as we waited to move from exam point to exam point; the eye chart, the color blindness, give a urine sample, blood draw, a turn your head and cough, a visual one over, hearing test in a small booth; then return to the marble benches and “chill out”. I was so cold I was shivering! After some delay, I was called for a blood pressure test. “Your blood pressure’s a little low, we’ll take it again later”, said the guy in a wool turtleneck sweater and a lab coat. I kept my thoughts to myself, but was raging inside already. I wanted to shout, “ Its cold as a meat locker in here, do you think that might have a little to do with my low blood pressure?” But I was already becoming savvy to the concept of “good news is bad news, bad news is good; Catch 22, moral inversion” and maybe if I’m too sick to be drafted, they’ll reject me. I began to feel a little guilt for the thought, after all many good men had been right here and gone on to serve, some I knew didn’t come back.

This is not how it was supposed to be. It’s not how I was told it would be by my elders whom I trusted to inform me how the World works. I had been betrayed!