Mind Your Own Business

They were giving out fortune cookies at the blood drive at work today. I opened mine. “We need each other. Please give blood,” it read.

“This is kind of weird with ‘in bed’ at the end,” I complained to the blood drive coordinator, but she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.

Giving blood bothers me a lot less than it used to and I don’t really get nervous anymore, but the long list of intensely personal questions is still pretty embarrassing. And it takes such a long time! The actual blood-donation part of donating blood only lasts about five minutes, but the screening, prep work, and post-donation snacking take up the better part of an hour, especially if they have those little Ritz cheese sandwiches.

As I was lying down on the table, one of the phlebotomists called over from the screening area, “This gentleman needs to leave for lunch – can he just come back and finish afterwards?”

“You’ll have to take all his vitals again,” replied the woman swabbing my arm.

“All of them? Even the iron?”

“Yes,” she responded, “but you don’t have to run through the questions again.”

This troubled me. What if the man was planning to turn tricks on his lunch hour? Or get a tattoo or a cornea transplant, or hop an express flight to London for a cheeseburger? You don’t know.

Actually, I asked about the tattoo question, because I’m always kind of toying with the idea of getting one, and they ask if you’ve had a tattoo within the last twelve months. (They also ask you if, during the last twelve months, you’ve had sexual contact with anyone who takes drugs or money for sex, a man who’s had sex with another man, anyone who uses needles to take illegal drugs, and a few other things. I always answer no, but to be perfectly honest, I’m just guessing.)

“So do you get deferred if you get a tattoo?” I asked the phlebotomist.

“Only if you did it outside of Texas,” he said.

So now you know. I didn’t ask, but I’m sure the same standard applies to all the nosy questions they ask about what you do in bed.