For years I thought my number was 246. I recently checked and it was actually 104. The highest number drawn that year was 95. I was my parents’ only child, about to be a college sophomore, and there was a sense the war might be coming to an end. Nonetheless, I don’t know how I could have been so oblivious for so long; I guess I didn’t really think I’d be called. Many years later, my mother matter-of-factly told me that my father, a WW2 veteran, had planned to take me to Canada if necessary. He’d never said a word about it himself.
