Monday, July 14, 2008

Life in the time of Plasma

Personal Rehab Post #3
After my stumble, we get back on the path to "faking it till I make it." Today I joked around with the girl who visits my desk all the damn time ....we'll call her...hmmmm... Swerve... and put the weekend and it's disappointments behind me. The journey of thousand miles. Man I hope I make it.



I was a broke college student. I don't mean the pansy broke that means you're cutting back on food quality, I mean the kind of broke where you're cutting back on food. There were times when dinner cost me $2 or less, as I would stop at the Spur gas station at the bottom of the hill leaving campus and get a bargin basement pint of juice for fifty cents and a dollar's worth of 'tater logs - potato wedges fried in chicken grease (about 6 or 8 depending on how they felt). Occasionally I would spring the extra quarter and get a Little Debbie snack to treat myself.

Thank god my neighbors cable signal bled through the wall so I had a decent number of channels.

But occasionally there would be a need for a boost, a proverbial (and literal) shot in the arm, a few extra dollars. And that, friends and neighbors, is when you would donate plasma.

I don't see plasma donor spots around anymore, so maybe the laws are different in Georgia. I used to like them because in 40 mins to an hour you could have a fast $20 in your pocket and as an added bonus you got free blood screenings. As long as they would let you donate you knew you were good healthwise. It was like being paid to make a doctor visit, so like groovy.

And that $20 to a college student was a fortune. Or it least it was when gas was a $1 a gallon. A few dollars in the tank, a four dollar six pack and two fifty wing special? Sheeit.

The other bonus was that donating plasma made drinking much more effective. I'm not going to lie, I had worked up a pretty high tolerance while matriculating. One night a friend & I polished off a bottle of 151 proof rum with no chaser like we were drinking soda. It was only after we were done did we then decide we probably should have cut it with something. However, after donating plasma...three beers might leave you to the sleep of babies, drunks and well hung men.

But then I sleep that way all the time. *Rimshot*

Combine the sudden low threshold with the beer barn special where they would fill a gallon jug of cold delicious hops and barley water for $3, young and less than discriminating women and cheap food...well let's just say sometimes you donated plasma to get the party started.

Good times, good times.

Barkeep. What you got back there from 1990?

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