Good Dogs Always Eat

            Yes, everyone has the ability to donate their blood. The only requirements are that you must carry a reasonable weight, or even better, carry twice as much weight as any normal person should; cannot have AIDs or test HIV-positive; cannot have traveled to any third-world countries in the last six months; cannot have or have had any cancer of the blood; and finally, have at least a hemoglobin rating of 12.5.

            The donors sat in the gym, clumped onto a group of bleachers.  One boy in back held a white box up to his chin. He was spooning beef into his mouth. Surely he must have been hungry, but I knew what was really on his mind: beef is very high in iron. Reminds me of that calculus test I crammed for.

            One girl decided to give me her life’s rant, “I just hope my iron level is okay. They didn’t let me donate last time. I’ve been eating red meat and beans every day. Vitamins twice a day. I hope it’s okay. Do you think it’s okay? Yeah it will be okay. I’m sure.” Pill popper…

            Another girl, “I drank eight glasses of water last night! I am so ready for this. No way am I going to faint.”

I flashed back to my night—it included a carton of cookie dough and Marlon Brando, “I coulda’ been a contenda’!”

           

“Number 22!”

That was me. I was transported to another line. Why must everything be accompanied by a countdown? This was some sick game of musical chairs. One down, 4 to go. I was getting closer.

            I looked to my left. One guy, who looked strikingly like a leprechaun version of Leonardo DiCaprio, teased a girl, “What if the needle rips open your arm and sends all of your blood flailing through the air? What if you pass out and never wake up? You know I heard they sometimes keep stabbing you until your arm turns blue.” What if the needle cracks in half, one part stuck in my vein, keeping the blood fresh and pulsating across the floor?

3 to go.

There are those who can handle large amounts of stress, and there are those who buckle under pressure. Sure we like to think of ourselves as soldiers, as warriors in an abysmal world, but the reality is that we are no stronger than the person sitting at our elbows. People seek differences on full moons—whether or not there are more babies born, more accidents, more Bigfoot sightings. I, personally, would like to know the statistics on April Fool’s Day. That one day people are allowed to be jerks and get away with it—and the people who are not jerks are the victims of jerks. Moreover, they are Victims of a Social Order. Yes, April 1^st is the date young adults receive verdicts from colleges. I would like to see the suicide rate for the month of April.

“Someone watch her!” A girl slumped over in a chair at the other side of the room, where the donors went after their blood-drawing. Her body slid down and she lay sprawled on her back.

2 to go.

            The girl who sat to the right of me hated the sight of blood. “Is that wire over there filled with  blood, or is it just red?” The wire was connected to an anaphorisis machine, the one responsible for separating blood platelets and recycling the leftovers back to the donor. It was bright orange.

I recalled meeting this girl at a recent party – the only reason I remembered her name was because it was the same as the feral child who was notorious for being locked in a closet for 14 years. The only difference was that the girl who sat next to me knew more than just the words, “stop” and “no.”

It was my turn. A nurse took me to an isolated cubicle for the typical donor questions.

 Her voice was practiced and casual on the border of condescending.

“Do you exercise and eat plenty of red meats?”

Let me think--Extra-curricular Activities:

Cross country, orchestra, Jr. Civitan, Jr. Beta, National Honors Society, Chamber for Charities, summer internship, Save the Whales Club

 Oh wait. That’s not what she means. Red meats? “Yeah, I ate a hamburger last week.”

“Okay, I’m going to test your hemoglobin level now. This will just be a prick.”

That uncomfortable splinter feeling spread through the tip of my finger.

“Wait here while I take this to the lab.”

I sat still and waited. The girl I talked to on the bleachers walked by, the pill popper.

“My iron levels were too low…”

I don’t stand a chance.

The nurse apparated with a form in her hands. “You see here, you need at least a 12.1 to be considered within the normal hemoglobin range, a 12.5 to be accepted into the program.”

 Wait, do you want that weighted or non-weighted?

 “If we try another finger there is a chance that the score might go up. Care to play again?”

“Okay. Try this finger. It’s the only one that I don’t use to play the violin.”

“All right now, let me see that hand. Don’t be nervous. You play violin? I used to play violin ages ago. What was it--A—G--D--?”

 “GDAE”

Good Dogs Always Eat

“Oh that’s right. Yeah. Good times.” 

Great times.

“Let me just take this to the lab. Be right back, don’t go anywhere.”

 So when taking the derivative of e^2x, you first take the derivative of 2x, being 2, and multiply it by e^2x. 2e^2x. When taking the integral by the udu method, u=2xdx, du=2, therefore you get ½ the integral e^u,which gives you…

 “Sorry, your results didn't quite qualify you as a donor. Close but no cigar. Let me just print out this deferral sheet...have you thought about community college?”

So this is what it has come to.

“So why didn’t you get into UPenn?”

            -“Oh, I’m anemic. I didn’t even try.”

            -“They told me my veins were too small.”

I read my deferral sheet. Iron deficiency.

Maybe this disability will make it easier for me to get into Tech. I have a friend who is deaf in one ear…

            I looked around. Bodies sat perched in dentist chairs, feet in the air, blood rushing to their heads. They sat with smug smiles and lofty wires streaming from their arms, the nurses inspecting their pale, arrogant faces. Afterwards they would proudly display the remaining of their broken capillaries and brag about the nurse’s inability to locate a vein. They were the chosen ones.