Honolulu Lite
Here’s a novel holiday
gesture for all of Hawaii’s
spineless weeniesBlood may be thicker than water, but from now to just the other side of the new year, it is a precious commodity in short supply.
Short supply, you ask? How can that be? You've got plenty pulsing through your veins, carrying oxygen hither and yon, from the toesies to the top of your cranial cavity. Then your blood washes all those nasty dead cells and things to the liver and kidneys to be expelled. You feel great! You've got plenty of blood!
Until you spring a leak. And let's face it, as amazing as the human body is, it's surrounded by only a thin covering of skin that is awfully easy to puncture and tear. When that happens you may suddenly find your blood vacating the premises. The only way you are going to live is if someone gives you some of their blood.
If you are injured in a typical horrendous car crash, the kind that happens with unnerving frequency during these year-end times we call "The Happy Holidays," you might need up to 50 units of someone else's blood to save your life. Hospitals alone need 200 units a blood a day for operations or to extend the lives of patients with cancer, kidney disease or any of the other horrible conditions that pop up when your own innards suddenly turn on you.
Where does that blood come from? Not from you. At least, statistically speaking. Because the sad fact is that Hawaii's ENTIRE blood supply is provided by only 2 percent of the population. Why? Because we basically are a state full of chickens. We like to think we are decent, brave, helpful people, but we're just a bunch of frightened wussies. Milquetoasts. Invertebrates. Jellyfish.
And what are we afraid of? A little needle. A sharp, scary, hairy-looking needle that we are too afraid to have stuck into our arms.
Well, you are anyway. I used to be that trembling lump of spineless protoplasm until my wife humiliated me into giving blood. Much as I'm trying to do to you, now. She comes from a family of blood donors. Her dad has given enough blood to keep the 25th Infantry on its feet for a year. She just made the Six Gallon Club. Six gallons!
Several years ago she had a quiet talk with me about being a big weenie. Specifically, she said, "Stop being a big weenie. Your blood is needed."
I felt like one of those morons who miss the easiest question on "Wheel of Fortune." So I started giving blood and, thanks to my wife's backbone transplant, just hit the three-gallon level.
So at this joyous time of year when people crash their automobiles into each other with ridiculous regularity, I urge you to not be a weenie. Go online at the Blood Bank of Hawaii's Web site (www.bbh.org) and make an appointment to donate some of that life juice you've been hogging all these years.
The tiny pain of the needle lasts only a second; the joy of knowing you aren't a weenie lasts a lifetime. Or at least until it's time to give blood again.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com