I just joined the 1-Gallon Club. I have now donated a full gallon of my blood over the past 7 years since I started giving (wow, it’s hard to believe it’s been that long since I started college!).
Top three reasons why I like giving blood:
1) It saves lives.
2) Free doughnuts.
3) The little sticker I get to wear on my shirt the rest of the day that says, “Be nice to me. I gave blood today.”
Blood Centers of the Pacific comes to Autodesk every couple months to collect blood from me and my co-workers. In the five months that I’ve worked here, they’ve come for my blood twice. I’ve donated twice.
Today was my 8th time giving blood since the first time I donated as a wee freshman at Vassar on October 10, 1995. I know the exact date because I never forget a date. Actually, it’s because I keep track of things like this in my Yahoo! Calendar. I like to track dates and record my own history. Just like writing in this blog most days. It’s fun to look back and read about my own past. And sometimes it comes in really handy to know dates. Like when you go to the doctor’s office and they want to know the last time you saw a doctor. With my online calendar, I can simply do a search and find out the exact date. So Friday, August 23, 2002 goes down in the history of my life as the day I joined the 1-Gallon Club.
The donation was very fast and easy today. There’s really no reason why I shouldn’t give blood — especially when they come to me and I only have to walk a few steps down the hallway. It’s my little way of giving back to those in need. Only once did I nearly pass out while giving blood — in college, of course, when I slept too little and drank too much. So for a few years, I was afraid to donate again. But then on October 29, 2001 — shortly after September 11 when blood supplies were low and everyone wanted to do his part to help out fellow Americans (although, sadly, those needing blood turned out to be few and far between) — I sucked it up and donated again (which was my 5th time). And today became my 4th donation in less than a year. And I feel really good about that.
You no longer have to go to Pakistan, where in June 2002 a woman was gang-raped as the punishment for a crime her younger brother allegedly committed, to find a society that treats its women with no respect. Nope, you just have to go to that faraway land called Florida (ruled, of course, by one of those brilliant Bushes), where women who want to put their babies up for adoption are now required by law to pay for an ad printed in the newspaper that discloses their full names, measurements, and sexual histories.
Leave it to the Bushes to push social change in the wrong direction.
