Naked Neighbours With Watering Cans

Louise and I gave blood today at the permanent downtown location of Blood Service Canada. It was her 62nd time and my 73rd. I prefer the permanent location to their mobile clinics because I am sure that the blood is going to be used in a hospital.

The mobile clinics look so fly-by-night…ish that I find it hard to believe they are affiliated with the Blood Services. I have visions of them taking my blood and selling it to the highest bidder in the US. For all I know, they could remove a kidney while I am in that chair having my blood drained. It wouldn’t be too hard to render me unconscious and just pop the kidney out. No, I think I’ll stick with the head office for all my blood donating needs.

Paranoia aside, the main Blood place has much better cookies and usually some pretty good soup. If you are lucky, they have “Crave” cupcakes which are like eating a delicious cloud. When they have the cupcakes, they will generally have regular sized cupcakes and tiny, mini cupcakes, I guess for those who are on a diet. The way I figure it, a unit of blood weighs just over a pound so the cupcakes are totally guilt free. At least that’s my story and I am sticking to it.

 

Donating blood involves time spent just sitting and literally watching your lifeblood drain away. There isn’t much to do while this is happening, generally the nursing staff doesn’t spend all the time chatting with you after you are all set up, so it is just sit there and look alert. If you close your eyes they get all worried that you have passed out which I am told is a bad thing. I am just tired. I will look around at the other people donating blood and check out what kind of shoes they are wearing. I like to have shoes with good soles to impress the other donators as they kill time looking at my shoes.

To tell you the truth, most of the people there just aren’t that interesting to look at unless they happen to pass out or the blood refuses to flow or flows too much. That leaves the windows. The building is surrounded by apartment buildings and all of the apartments have balconies. You would think that there would be people sitting on their balconies, reading the paper and drinking the first coffee of the day. Not one person! You know, when I think back over the years I have never seen anyone on any of those balconies. That’s odd isn’t it?

I would be sitting on the balcony and I am sure you would be too. Why not use the extra space? I don’t expect every balcony to have someone on it, but at least on balcony should be in use at any one time. Sheesh!

My daughter lived in an apartment building in Toronto that was quite literally surrounded by other apartment buildings. I asked her is she had binoculars to watch the neighbours and she didn’t. I suspect that she felt it was a little creepy and I guess it is. That being said, the next time I visited I brought a pair of binoculars for her and she never gave them back. She did tell me that no one ever does anything interesting on the balconies anyways. Just after that, I saw a naked guy on the balcony of the building directly across from her watering his plants. I could be wrong, but that seemed interesting to me.

That is what the Blood Services building needs, naked neighbours with watering cans.

YOU SHOULD DONATE BLOOD IF YOU CAN. 

HOW ELSE WILL YOU EVER SAVE A LIFE?