There have been many mornings when I woke up thinking about
something. The subject could be anything, such as, thoughts about a project I’m working on (or merely planning), something in the news I’ve been thinking about, or even about a memory, often a complicated one. The latter is what I woke up to a couple mornings ago.
These morning ruminations are a little weird, even to me. They’re not extensions of a dream, as far as I’m ever aware, but instead it’s almost as if my thinking brain was bored with my sleeping brain and decided to just start mulling over something. Then rest of my brain groggily becomes aware of the ruckus in my head and starts to stir, bringing me with it. I realise that anthropomorphising all this only makes it weirder, and it’s probably not even remotely close to what’s really happening, but imagining the scenario at least gives me a way to perceive why this happens.
So, I recently woke up to my brain thinking about the ASVAB tests the boys in my high school class we’re required to take in 1975 or 76 (I’m not sure which). The test was actually called “Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery”, but I only ever heard it mentioned by its initials—ASVAB—which was pronounced as a word, “ASS-vab”. As far as I know, this was just the way people said it, and the first syllable wasn’t said that way out of spite, at least, not by me. Perhaps it should’ve been.
Wikipedia describes the test well:
The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is a multiple choice test, administered by the United States Military Entrance Processing Command, used to determine qualification for enlistment in the United States Armed Forces. It is often offered to U.S. high school students when they are in the 10th, 11th and 12th grade, though anyone eligible for enlistment may take it.
They go on to say that all branches of the armed forces adopted it in 1976, and that was probably for a good reason: Registration for the US military’s draft ended on April 1, 1975, and didn’t resume until 1980. Young men born between March 29, 1957 and December 31, 1959
were not required to register for the draft. I’m one of those folks who never had to register for the draft.
All of that is the essence of why I was so bitter about having to take the test—it was never about military service for those who chose it, but, rather, about the irrational, immoral, and unjustifiable compulsion and the discrimination. Yeah, that last part was huge for me.
Prior to its suspension in 1975, young women turning 18 were not required to register for the draft. I thought that was indefensible: Why should only young men be (possibly?) denied their freedom and liberty? In those days, most folks in Congress were old white men (well, actually, most of them still are…), and they didn’t think “young ladies” were capable of or suitable for military service, especially combat. It turned out that barring women from combat positions also made it impossible for them to attain higher rank. How convenient for “certain people”…
That same idiotic prejudice extended to the ASVAB: In my high school, only boys took the test, and it was mandatory. As I recall, we were threatened with suspension if we didn’t take the test. I hated and resented the entire experience, and from that moment until I graduated I considered the school administration and Board as adversaries for that reason alone (there were later other reasons, it turned out, because—surprise!—I’ve always chafed at authoritarianism).
Eventually the ASVAB became optional for young women to take, too, probably as a result of their growing emancipation—and the military establishment’s need for recruits. In 1980,
President Jimmy Carter stupidly reinstated registration for the draft after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, which was one of his biggest mistakes, in my opinion at the time—and ever since. The new registration still excluded young women (of course?), but it also was retroactive: Anyone born on or after January 1, 1960 had to register, not just those turning 18 on the date of the presidential order or later, as most folks would’ve expected. At the time, I thought that was immoral and unconscionable (it’s easy to be judgemental in one’s teens and early 20s). Back then, I also thought it was because the military needed cannon fodder, but in the end Carter didn’t send soldiers to Afghanistan, but, worse, in some ways, the USA’s covert actions helped encourage the eventual rise of the Taliban—and the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the USA. “Unintended consequences” with an exclamation point.
By the mid-1970s, I knew I’d never be part of the military. Actually, one of my earliest memories is of a live draw for the draft lottery, and seeing them draw my birthdate. It sent a chill through me, even though I was probably less than half the registration age at the time. Around 1970, my family and I went on vacation that included Ontario. There, we happend across a Lutheran College (it was either there or another school where I first saw cricket being played—foreshadowing of my eventual adult life?). I thought when I turned 18 I’d chose that college—in Canada—so I could escape the draft. I was around 9 at the time, so I give myself a lot of slack on that reasoning.
When registration for the draft ended (briefly), I was ecstatic: I wouldn’t even have to entertain military service. Let alone ways to avoid it. On some level, perhaps basic and elemental, I understood that I’d never be safe in the military because I was gay, even though I was very deeply closeted at the time. But all of that was about me alone: I never thought badly of anyone who chose military service, I just
knew on a fundamental and existential level that it wasn’t right for me.
My morning thoughts in this care were about literally all of that, and as such things often are, it was like an aural blog post. This written version is nothing like by brain’s original intrusion into my morning, not the least because, perhaps against appearances, this post is much less strident than that morning thinking session was. If that morning thinking—lecturing?—was a YouTube video, even I would’ve skipped ahead. But it made me wonder about things I wasn’t sure about—the ASVAB itself, the draft, even how long registration for the draft was (rightfully…) suspended. I ended up learing things, and that’s always a good thing.
Yeah, but, ya know, I really could do without waking up to my brain making morning intrusions.
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