From Janet Wilson Meets the Queen by Beverley Cooper, published by Scirocco Drama. The year is 1969. Robbie has arrived in Vancouver from San Francisco. He’s evading the draft into the Vietnam War.
Robbie:
They do it by birthdays. Trying to make it all fair. Tricky Dick Nixon had this bright idea to have it on TV. So instead of watching Andy of Mayberry, the whole country watched the Draft Lottery: buncha old Republicans in suits and glasses pulling numbers out of a big glass jar, deciding who is going to be drafted first.
Some of my buddies got together that night and dropped acid to watch. I planned to hang loose with them but my father who is one serious dude ordered me to sit and watch that lottery “like a man for once in my shit filled life or he’d pin me down and hack off my girlie hair with his bowie knife”. So the three of us, mom, Big Man Daddy-o and me, sat in front of the television set; nice little family party. I was freaking out on the inside but sitting up “like a man” on the outside.
They had this bright idea to invite the youth of the country to pick out capsules. So this absolutely square dude, Paul Murray, whose a member of The— get this—Selective Service Youth Advisory Council —steps up to the jar to draw out a buncha capsules. Puts his hand in, picks the first one he touches, hands it to Suit-man. Suit-man opens it, tugs out the paper, unrolls it, reads it out loud. The first birth date they picked was September 14th. So all the poor losers born on September 14 were the first to be called up. Suit-man pinned that date up by the number 001. Paul Murray dips his hand back in the cookie jar, comes up with a second date. April, 24th, 1950. My birthday. I am draft number 002.
My old man leans over, puts his hand on my shoulder with that firm grip he has and says “Congratulations, Son, you are going to make your country proud.” Mom goes all pale like mashed potatoes. Tears splurting out, mouth all crumpled…I stand, start walking, out the door, barefoot, into the California breeze. I let that breeze take me right down to Haight Ashbury and the world of psychedelic bliss. Was trippin’ for a week.