As the Vietnam War raged on in the 1960s, a young Chevy Chase was getting ready to graduate from college. During that time, he was also fully preparing himself to enter the military after he finished school. Not because he was eager to fight for his country, but because, like many other men in those days, he’d received an induction notice giving him a 1-A classification. Basically what that translates to is the draft board had deemed Chase fit for service.

Usually a story like this leads to a stint in some branch of the military or another, but when Chase sat down for an interview with Pat Sajak on the first episode of the Wheel of Fortune host’s short-lived talk show in 1989, he revealed that he never did, in fact, serve his country at any point. “I practiced,” he joked, when Sajak brought up the subject. Chase went on to explain that with the war heating up, he felt less and less eager to be involved. “I thought the best I could do for my country at the time would be to get out, of course…get out of the army.”

Sajak then asked Chase how one would go about accomplishing such a thing. “This’ll certainly finish me if I ever wanna run for anything,” he responded. Chase prefaced his answer by saying he was one of many people back then who didn’t support the war. “With all due respect to those men who went, at the time, I felt, ‘No, I don’t wanna support this, and most certainly don’t wanna get blown up.’” So he decided to give phony answers on one of his qualification exams.

Chase looked at the list of things they were asking if he’d ever experienced, like headaches and bed-wetting, and checked “yes” next to all of them—including homosexual tendencies. “I figured, you know, if you’re 12, 13, there’s probably some…who knows? You’re doing something in the back room with a friend, you don’t know whether it’s homosexual. You’re just a kid, you know?” That was the thing that got him ushered in to see a psychiatrist. When Chase confirmed to the man that he liked boys, his classification was promptly switched to 4-F, and just like that, he was no longer qualified for military service.