Well, it’s Monday afternoon now, and I just received my official “thank you” letter from the President of the United Blood Services organization for donating a pint of my own bodily fluid to the cause back in May.
Back then, the big ominous blood truck was parked on campus outside Coates Hall like some white-trash RV trailer, and a group of us walking around by the Student Union spotted it.
It was a spontaneous decision. I decided we would hop aboard the blood bus and help the cause.
The shedding of blood has historically been a symbolic and important event — Jesus of Nazareth told his followers “this is my blood; it has been shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven” — which is some pretty heavy dope to lay on a bunch of fishermen and tax-collectors who were in Jerusalem to have supper and fraternize.
But this may be straying from the point I was going to make about the whole “giving blood” ordeal as containing both purposive, material and maybe solidary incentives, too.
We told the UBS people we were there to donate blood. Two of my friends backed out for reasons that were never fully explained — one of them was supposedly ingesting a cocktail of pharmaceuticals every day, by her own admission — while my friend’s girlfriend and I stayed the course, and answered a litany of objective questions about our sexual history and international traveling record.
The answer to almost all of these is a resounding “no.” “Have you used needles to take drugs intravenously in the past six months?” “Over the past six months have you engaged in unprotected sexual activity with a member of the same sex?”
Anything short of an exclamatory “No!” and an accompanying look of visceral disgust during this round of preliminary questions is likely grounds for expulsion and permanent disbarment from the blood bus.
The surveyors will then ask some of the same questions in varied order or with longer time-spans involved (i.e. instead of just six months, now the buggers are prying back into your history seven years) to be 100 percent sure you were telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth all along.
Which shouldn’t be a problem if you just follow Mark Twain’s old truism about not lying if you’re unsure.
Once your track record is confirmed clean and it’s clear that you’re not some kind of uncontrolled homosexual nymphomaniac or perennial heroin junkie, you’re free to move on into the hot-seat where the real deal goes down, and the transaction of fluids and philanthropic payoff occurs in real time.
I recall trying to talk with the really funny attendants but being too preoccupied with keeping my arm upright and squeezing some piece of sponge or foam at intervals.
When the IV bag is replete with dark red blood the workers just drained into a sack from your veins, it’s time to hit the road and collect on the material incentives component of your rewards.
For my donation I got the UBS gym satchel – basically a queer-looking red backpack with only one strap.
Since we were the last customers for the day, they stuffed our sacks to the seams with cookies and snack-treats.
The thing is slung over my computer chair right now, and I still reach in there from time to time to grab a pack of Chips Ahoy or Ritz crackers. So in summation, I think there’s a major reason the Ol’ Galilean struck a nerve when he started divinely rhapsodizing on things like “the shedding of blood for you and for all” and the ultimate forgiveness of sins and it is due in large part to the powerful nature of the act.
Giving blood is sacrosanct on some deep and mystic level of the human consciousness.
UBS says to give blood about three times a year, but right now I am shooting for about a six or seven mean-average.
And I always carry in my wallet my United Blood Services “hero” card, for good or ill.
—-Contact Trevor Fanning at [email protected].