When I turned 18 I got a letter from the government informing me that I was to report for my obligatory draft physical at a building that was, from memory, somewhere in West Los Angeles .
I arrived feeling confident that I’d pass my physical and then I’d have to decided which service to join. Probably the US Navy since that’s what my stepdad had served in during WWII and I like the idea of being near or on the ocean rather than landlocked somewhere. The likelihood of going to Viet Nam was quite real and I reasoned that it was my duty.
I’d followed the American involvement in the war since I first read about it in LIFE Magazine and TIME Magazine. Based on that superficial information I accepted the position that it was this American’s duty to defend Viet Nam from being taken over by Communist China.
Before this my only experience of regimentation had been school gym, swimming, water polo and football teams and summer camp. I was unused to not being treated like an individual or being ordered around by strangers. It was a foreign experience about to become even more alien.
As ordered I arrived at the building, parked my car and joined the parade of guys my age entering the building and following the signs directing us to go up the stairs to the next floor.
From that point on all of us were being ordered around as if we were already conscripts and told to stand in what turned out to be a sort of lopsided circle in a large room with wooden floors. Along one side of where we were standing was several trestle tables. Behind the tables sat men in uniform and a couple of men in white coats like doctors. The men who ordered us around stood at the sides of these tables and moved around quite a bit. They all wore uniforms and were quite stern.
One of these men explained what would be expected of us during our time there and warned us not to question anything or talk back. We were to follow orders and it would be best for everyone if we did.
We’d already filled out forms on clipboards and handed them to the uniformed men who gathered them from each of us. Now it was time for the part everyone had warned me about. The strip and poke.
As we stood around with our underwear dropped around our feet I noticed that quite a few of my fellow nudists were staring at a guy across from me with the biggest cock I’ve ever seen. The guy seemed quite pleased with all the attention and I couldn’t help but notice that this was the only noticeable thing about him. He was fat and had a face like a pudding. But his cock was quite large and hung down nearly halfway to his knees.
Except for a thermometer and the odd enema when I was a kid I’d never had anything shoved up my ass. My experience in Junior High School when a bully goosed me while I was going up some stairs was painful enough, but not as painful for him after I punched him in the forehead so he fell backwards down the stairs to the next landing and carried a large knot on his forehead for weeks. But I think the white coated guy who examined me was looking for hernias and I don’t remember him doing anything like the prostate exam I was to have decades later.
So there I am, still standing more or less naked in a room full of naked males when one of the people sitting behind one of the long tables jumps up, shouts, “Hold it!” Points at me, shouts, “You there. Don’t move.” He scoots across the table and rushes out to grab my left hand and hold it up by my index finger.
“What’s this,” he demands. “This finger. What’s the story/” It took me a moment to regain my composure. I explain that my finger was severed in an accident when I was three and reattached. It grew back crooked and stunted and has been this way ever since I could remember.
He scrutinized my finger carefully and asked if I had any feeling it it. I told him yes and that holding like that hurt. So he gently returned my hand, thanked me and returned to the table where he started writing on what I assumed was my clipboard form.
We quickly pulled up our underwear (it amazed me that so many guys wore boxer shorts instead of my y-fronts) and were told to get back into our “street clothes.” Then we were ushered into another room that looked like a classroom where we sat a desks and filled in more forms.
These questions are far more personal. Many were about things I’d never been asked about before. I wondered why they wanted to know.
Again the forms were gathered up and we waited while we were called in for one-to-one interviews. Finally I was put in a room with a bland sort of man who told me there would be no more tests for me because I’d failed the physical. Failed? After surfing regularly since I was 16 I was strong, fit and had no infirmities. I was told they’d probably notice the “surfing knots” (calcium deposits) on the tops of my feet and on my knees caused by paddling my surfboard while propped up on my knees. But no one had said a word about them. I was well muscled and had a massive lung capacity. Why did I fail?
“It’s your trigger finger,” he explained, glancing disdainfully at the index finger of my left hand like it might be catching. I tried to hide it. “But I’m right handed,” I said. And then, without any change of expression to indicate he was joking, “But what if your right arm gets blown off?” And that was that.
While just about everyone else stayed on I was told I could go (in other words, go) and walked down the stairs in into the building lobby where there was a middle aged lady standing at a kiosk with coffee and donuts courtesy of the USO.
The lady offered me some coffee and my choice from some rather stale, manky looking donuts. “Don’t worry honey,” she said. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
After sipping the weak coffee on the way out to my car I was starting to feel anything but ashamed. I was feeling good. GREAT! I’d just been saved from having my life regimented and controlled by more people like those I’d been dealing with upstairs.
Weeks later I received a letter containing my draft card with my 1-Y classification. I wasn’t exactly “unfit” for military service but I would only be called up as a last resort. But, it left one important question unanswered.
Could I still pull a trigger if my right arm was blown off?
Pieces from a Puzzling Life 