Pack Your Bags, You're Going On A Guilt Trip

I'm firmly convinced that God gave mothers an innate ability to pour guilt upon their young in order to get them to behave the way they ought to in times of great idiocy and neglect on their parts. And I'm just as convinced that those of us who realize this will use this gift to our advantage, not only with our children, but in dealing with others with whom we come in contact on a daily basis.

And Girlfriends, that can be a good thing in its place. Oh yes, it can.

Take work, for example.

I was in charge of a blood drive held at my place of employment today. Our goal was to have 20 able-bodied men and women sign up to donate a pint of blood. Bear in mind there are about 85 of us in the immediate vicinity, so this was not an unrealistic goal.

As of yesterday there were 10 people signed up.

TEN.

We were down in numbers from the last donation period because of several reasons, some of which included:

1. People who recently donated platelets and/or blood and couldn't give


2. People who were on medications or had illnesses that couldn't give


3. People who have been out of the country and were restricted from giving for a year


4. People who were low on iron, and


5. People who were afraid of needles and refused to give under any circumstances.

So my inner Mother of All Guilt came to the surface. I couldn't help it. I sent an email to the troops worthy of ...well... MY mother. It went something like this:

I know. We ask, and ask, and ask again. And you give.

And it gets to the point where you say, "Whadda they
want...BLOOD????"

And the answer is yes. We do. A whole pint, please. And we're not picky about whether it's leaded or unleaded, fat-free or fat-laden, ultra-refined or lower class.

We just want it.

We don't want it to sell on the street or to drop on cars as they pass under an overpass. We don't want it to fertilize our gardens or feed our pet piranhas.

We want it to help other people live. We want it to give to people who need a little extra to survive. And who knows? One day one of those people could be YOU.

The great thing is it doesn't cost you a dime. You just get stuck, bleed into a bag for a little bit, then you get cookies and pop. It's free. It's easy. It's practically painless.

And we're short at least 10 donors as of this writing. The blood drive is tomorrow.

Won't you please consider signing up? Reservations will be taken through today, but if more people don't sign up we may have to call the whole thing off.

And that would be a very bad thing indeed.

I got 7 more donors from that. Well, from that AND from going to individual offices today to ask people point-blank what time they'd like to show up. And from siccing one of the blood center guys on a particularly good prospect.

All told, we had a total of 17 sign up. Not a bad increase for one day. We had 5 first-time donors of the ten pints we were able to collect. 7 of the people who signed up couldn't donate due to various reasons; an unusually high number. Two flat-out didn't show up.

Next time, in January, we'll try a different tactic. Bribery has always worked wonders in my part of town. Maybe if we mix the two together......