I finished my day by giving, literally, my third pint of blood since I began this campaign. A few more and I’ll be up to five gallons.
Yesterday was one of the first times since I’ve begun contributing blood that I didn’t joke with the nurses about how skittish I was at having my blood drawn. You’d think that after forty or fifty times I’d start getting over this and maybe I’m starting to.
I blame Mr. Behrends for my giving blood. He was my biology teacher when I was a high school sophomore at Mankato High. A former high school heavy weight wrestler, he might even have been a Minnesota champion, he was a pretty religious fellow and earnest as the day is long. He once told us to be prepared if we ever talked to a committed communist to face some pretty rigorous skepticism about things like Christianity.
I mostly remember mangling our poor pithed frog when we had disections to do. I was not headed for a surgical career and It was all I could do to prick my finger to put a drop of blood on a slide. The funny thing is that blood and pain don’t really bother me all that much. Its needles inserted into veins that gets me and it has ever since I was a little kid.
Mr. Beherends told our class that he felt is was our civic duty to donate blood and his conviction impressed itself on me enough that I gave blood a couple times in college. The first time I almost fainted. I took a break for a number of years after I was first married but my wife got me started again when she made a donation. In good conscience I had to resume as well and the Memorial Blood bank has had me in its sights ever since. It used to be twice a year but recently has become a four times a year “gift.”
I read recently that some scientists speculate that regular blood donations prolong the life of the donor (as well as the donees). I like the sound of that since I’d like to inflict myself on the world for as long as I possibly can.
