Member-only story
Humor (sort of)
Normal vs Average
Or are they both the same thing?
[If you’re not yet a paid Medium member, you can still read this for free: HERE.]
When I was 16 years old, in the summer of 1956, having just turned that age in March of that year, I enrolled in a paramilitary summer camp. OK, that’s not quite true. I did not enroll. My dad enrolled me. Whether I liked it or not.
We belonged to a church (Seventh-Day Adventist) that asked the Draft Board to classify its young men as 1-AO, which so far as I know was a status conferred only on that one denomination. The ‘normal’ status for draft-ready male youth (the Army did not yet admit women) was 1-A. The status for regular Conscientious Objectors (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses) was 1-O, meaning they were eligible to be drafted, but were exempt from service in uniform because of their religion. Adventists were also considered Conscientious Objectors, but of some sort of ‘hybrid,’ in between these two extremes. We were supposed to be willing to wear the uniform, but not willing to carry a weapon. Men of our religion who were drafted into the Army were usually assigned to medic service, because ministering to wounded soldiers and carrying a gun were activities that were acknowledged to be rather contradictory to each other. This state of affairs had been mutually worked out…
