I was at a party recently and the guys were reminiscing about the various tactics people used to avoid the draft during the Vietnam war. One of them I had never heard of. It involved peanut butter and I think they were implying that the draftee would put it up their butt before the physical.
What disease is this supposed to simulate? Can’t the doctor tell the difference between peanut butter and the normal contents of the rectum?
I’ve heard this in the context of an accused murderer pulling a stunt in the courtroom, where he reaches into his pants, pulls out a brown creamy substance (the peanut butter) and starts licking his hands and making a whole scene of it. The accused murderer is declared insane and he avoids jail time.
Similarly, the military draftee in your story could reach into his trousers and start sampling the snack he laid therein. The military personnel would think him crazy and he would thus avoid being drafted.
Now, I’m not sure whether either of these scenarios has even been attempted or what the actual results were or would be if one were to try them.
After a great deal of painstaking trial and error in-depth research, I have determined the only sure fire way to anally avoid the draft is at the moment the doctor utters the phrase “OK, now bend over and spread em!”, you have a trained winged monkey fly out of your butt.
The sense I got was that the doctor would discover this during an exam – it wasn’t part of a crazy act. But since we were at a nice party eating, nobody felt like going into the details.
You probably heard it in “Training Day,” where one of Denzel Washington’s friends relates the story.
Doubtful it’s ever happened in real life, since persons in the proximity of the defendant would immediately smell delicious peanut butter instead of fecal matter.
Was there some automatic induction clause for guys who messed with the system - ie, even if they had something else wrong with them, it would be overlooked?
Given current politics, just getting one other person to sing it with you (in harmony) won’t do it. The end of DADT will see to that. Best get fifty or so friends to help out.
In the days before snopes.com, they had these things called “urban legends”. Before the internet, there was probably a demand for a newspaper column to debunk these things.
Just because someone heard from someone else that this might get you out of the draft cuz it worked for his brother’s friend’s brother-in-law, does not mean that it worked at all. Also, not every guy who tells you what he did in his misspent youth is telling the truth.
Vietnam vet here. While I know I didn’t see or hear everything about draft dodging, I must admit I never heard of the peanut butter trick before this thread.
I was drafted in 1969. Upon arrival at AFEES, we were ushered into a room and seated in rows. The guy sitting next to me was very overweight. Thinking he was close to the limit, he told me of eating 13 pounds of bananas during the previous 12 hour period. Whether he did or did not, I don’t know. I do know, however, he was not on the busses to the airport (for the 2 of us going to the Marines) or the busses with the 111 heading to Ft. Leonard, Mo and the Army.