My lottery number was high enough that I was probably safe from the draft–and I had received a scholarship to Tulane which also would have helped. But, I was sufficiently anal about all of this such that I went down to the draft board headquarters to kind of "triple-check" my status and be sure that the war was not going to interrupt my studies. Behind the desk at the draft board office was a very short, VERY old lady. I told her I was just checking my status even though I had a fairly high number and was off to New Orleans in the fall. She pointed to a room behind her filled with file cabinets and told me the "K’s" were in a bottom drawer and "KL" (the first two letters of my last name) was all the way in the back. She looked me in the eye and told me that if I made her go in there, bend over, and try to find my file, she was going to make sure that I was on the front lines. I thanked her, backed out of the office, and got on with my life.
