\u2022 Here’s a challenge for you.\u00a0 When was the last time anyone told you a joke?\u00a0 I don’t mean a crack by a late-night comedian but the kind of joke that used to pass from one person to another, before the internet made that kind of thing pass\u00e9.\u00a0 My spouse and I still recall the one her mother liked to tell about the grocery shopper looking for broccoli<\/a>, which gave her an excuse to use the f-word — because hey, it’s a joke!\u00a0 Naughty jokes were social currency back then.<\/p>\n \u2022 The correct number of black olives to add to a tossed salad is (a) 2, (b) 3, (c) 4.<\/p>\n \u2022 The correct number of baked croutons to add to a tossed salad is (a) 3, (b) 5, (c) 7.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0 I bet most of us amateur chefs think we know the “right” answers to the above questions. I say definitely (b) and (c) unless the croutons are those “Texas-style” ice-cube-sized ones, in which case don’t bother to add them at all.<\/p>\n \u2022 Most video games and role-playing games award a player multiple “lives” in case you do something wrong (or haven’t gained enough knowledge) and you need a do-over to survive the current encounter.\u00a0 Life, or more precisely the prospect of losing it, is the best teacher.\u00a0 So it’s a shame, how in real life, we only get one of them.<\/p>\n \u2022 But wait — aren’t most religions designed to award extra lives, to keep us in the game?<\/p>\n \u2022 Something inspired me this evening to check in on the archives of my college newspaper<\/a>, the Carnegie-Mellon Tartan, for which I was a columnist, cartoonist and features editor.\u00a0 Re-reading just a couple of my articles from those days, I was struck by how unbelievably bad they were, smug and cynical and full of authority I didn’t merit, albeit dressed up in clever phrasings.\u00a0 It made me wonder how this blog will look to me when I am 120.<\/p>\n \u2022 Speaking of prunes, Henry Kissinger, NSA chief and Secretary of State for Richard Nixon from 1969-1974, celebrated his 100th birthday<\/a> a few weeks ago.\u00a0 Sadly, 58,22o U.S. troops who served in Vietnam will not match Henry’s milestone.<\/p>\n Kissinger was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize<\/a> in 1973 for his purported efforts to keep more young people from dying in that ill-fated war.\u00a0 Many recall those efforts differently, but the truth of the matter has been obscured by time.<\/p>\n Lottery Number #001 went to those born on March 6, 1953.\u00a0 I\u00a0could easily have been born one week earlier on March 6.\u00a0 But I wasn’t and that is half the reason I’m here today.<\/p>\n The highest lottery number called up in 1973<\/a> was #010, or those born on August 23, 1953.\u00a0 The last U.S. military draftee, Dwight Eliot Stone<\/a> of Sacramento, California, was inducted into the Army 50 years ago on June 30, 1973.\u00a0 He was not called to serve in Vietnam.<\/p>\n Immediately after my lottery number was announced, my not-even-19-year-old self wrote and recorded in my dorm room a multi-track song of celebration called No Army for Me.\u00a0 <\/em>It was probably my most highly-produced recording, replete with jet-engine sound effects inspired by the 1968 song Sky Pilot<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 The essence of the song was that my life<\/em> would go on, unscathed by mortar rounds, my limbs intact.<\/p>\n “Hell no, I won’t go!\u00a0 \/\u00a0 I don’t have to, you know!” was one of the lyrics, referencing the anti-draft protests of that era<\/a> and how they had become moot.\u00a0 I was nineteen.\u00a0 And now here I am apologizing for having been inappropriately happy that I wasn’t cannon-fodder.<\/p>\n The survival guilt<\/a> of solders who see their peers killed in battle is well-documented.\u00a0 But I haven’t read anything about lottery guilt — how some people were forced to fight for their lives while others born a week later could watch the war on TV.\u00a0 Or write songs about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2022 What should one do when the housefly one has been chasing for hours is found resting on the business end of the fly-swatter? \u2022 Let’s all finally admit that when we decide to make scrambled eggs, we really don’t … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-content\/uploads\/xx-ttery0.png\")
<\/a>I did not serve in the military — as I find myself saying every time I buy something at Lowes<\/a>.\u00a0 The only reason I am writing this piece and you are reading it is because how a basket of numbered capsules happened to tumble on February 2, 1972.\u00a0 That was the day my 1973 lottery number, #244, was drawn and I was off the hook from serving and dying in Vietnam.<\/p>\n