Bloody Hell

December is traditionally the month when every organization that was ever organized starts demanding that each of us contribute to their cause, some of which are wholly untrustworthy.  Do you have any idea how many times I've been tricked into donating to Al-Qaeda?  Zero times, to be honest, but zero is not a funny amount of times to pretend to have accidentally donated to terrorists and I'm trying my very best to be funny over here.

Which group has those intimidating ladies with the bells that are always in my way when I'm trying to leave the grocery store?  The Salvation Army, I'm seeing.  Wait, they're technically a Protestant church based in London that has a million members?!  I don't like that at all.  We're annually sending our money overseas to religious zealots who live in a city that has embraced the Jacksonville Jaguars as their own?  That is super uncool.  Salvation Army, you have officially become my least favorite army, overtaking both the Commando Elite from Small Soldiers and the Axis powers.

The biggest racket, in my uninformed opinion is the industry that goes around collecting our blood.  Every winter, we are bombarded with advertisements that urge us to "donate life," and such, but I'm not convinced that they are not just keeping a big ol databank of our DNA to use for future nefarious purposes.  It's like the scene in The Dark Knight where Batman hacks everyone's cell phone to hunt down the Joker, except in this case, instead of using our phones, people are tracking us with our blood.  And our phones, as well, probably.

Admittedly, part of my disdain for the blood suckers stems from a traumatic experience while in high school.  These goons set their whole operation up on our auditorium stage at Christmas time, which I didn't appreciate because I had to move my one-man holiday show, How the Smoke Bandit Stole Hanukkah, to the community theater like an amateur.  I didn't actually put on a show called How the Smoke Bandit Stole Hanukkah, that's just another funny thing I made up for you to laugh along with at home, but the blood people did set up a bunch of donation stations on the stage.

I wasn't terribly interested in giving them my blood because of my previously-outlined suspicions, but when I learned that donating would get me out of class and land me a free cookie, my convictions went out the window and I signed right up.  You can make your own joke here that compares my flip-flopping behavior to someone that you don't like politically or who clearly sold out their ideals for personal gain - may I suggest one Taylor Swift, perhaps?

I wasn't bullied or anything in school, but even so, when you're 17, you often just want to keep a low profile and not embarrass yourself in front of your peers.  This was my goal going into the drive and I was doing pretty well, even after they had punctured me and my bag was filling up at a rate that I would consider alarming.  I didn't show any sign of fear or nervousness or discomfort and it seemed that it would be smooth sailing to Cookie Island for Captain Smoke Bandit.  That's when I passed out with absolutely no warning.

I awoke some time later, upside down like a real bat man, with a group of students, teachers, medical folks, general gawkers, etc. gathered around and staring down at me with bewilderment and stifled laughter.  This is not an ideal way to wake up and I do not recommend it.  The nurses or whatever they are informed me that when jackasses like me pass out like that, it is standard protocol to tip the jackass's chair over so the jackass's head receives additional blood flow, which makes sense, but it was not a terribly dignified look for me.

Overall, everything was fine, as I suffered nothing more than a deflated ego, but I certainly did not avoid humiliating myself that day, nor when How the Smoke Bandit Stole Hanukkah debuted soon after.  I collected myself and slunk back to the class that I was hoping to miss with my stale, complimentary cookie that was so not worth fainting in public for and have not donated blood since.  But, to maintain my humanitarian spirit, I do still find myself being fooled into sending a check to Al-Qaeda every Christmas.