When Jennifer Kathleen suggested writing about our style icons, I made the comment that I had no style icons, as I had no style beyond the ladies who give out the blood donor t-shirts.  Someone then suggested that I blog about those ladies, so I got to thinking about the ladies and donating and t-shirts, and decided to blog about the t-shirts.

I first donated blood when I was sixteen.  A woman in our area had been grievously wounded and as part of the process of saving her life, she had been given dozens of pints of blood.  At that time, each pint had to be paid for by the recipient or replaced in her name.  Our church was one of probably many that took up her cause, encouraging parishioners to donate in her name.  My parents were regular donors, but neither could donate just then, probably because of colds or cold sores.  So, my then seventeen-year-old sister decided to donate and, armed with a permission slip from our mother, took me along for moral support.

When she was tested, though, my sister was rejected as a donor, probably because of low blood count.  Hmm.  What to do.  What she did was to point to me and say something along the lines of, “what about HER?”  WTF wasn’t in our vocabulary then, but some pg-rated version of that was what went through my mind.  As our mother had written the note as a general “my daughter has my permission,” leaving out any mention of which daughter she was referring to, it pertained equally to me.  I was tested, accepted, and stuck but good.  Ouch.

I don’t know if I got a t-shirt then or not, but blood donor t-shirts were around the house as mom used to get them.  I donated a time or two after that and remember getting my own shirt back then, then I joined the Navy (at 17).  The Navy used to get its blood donations from sailors, and I was a regular donor.  Sailors who donated got four hours off; we called that Vampire Liberty.  No t-shirts, but then we already had all Navy clothes, all the Navy time; t-shirts would have been a little redundant.

But, even then, I got blood donor t-shirts.  Since Mom was such a regular donor, she got more t-shirts than she could use, so she used to send them to me.  (Mom is 81, and still a regular donor.  Blood Bank ladies never say die until their donors do--hahaha!)

After the Navy, I started donating at the bloodbank near my work.  This alarmed my boss, who thought I would run out of blood if I didn’t stop donating, but I needed the wardrobe, so I kept it up.  Back then, the ladies gave t-shirts more often then not.  

At one point, my collection of blood donor t-shirts must have included about two dozen shirts, more from my donating and the rest sent by my mother.  When the girls were younger, they used blood donor t-shirts as nighties.  We also used them on spaghetti/pizza/tomato soup nights, or anything else in that color spectrum.  I had four red t-shirts, one each for KidOne and KidTwo, and one each for FriendL’s younger daughters, who stayed with us whenever their mother was hospitalized.  I’d announce dinner by telling the girls, “put on the red shirts!”  They’d all go get their shirts, which, being adult size, fit right over whatever they were wearing.  Shirts on, they’d come to the table and enjoy whatever tomato-based food I was serving that night.

The best t-shirts had jokes on them.  I had a brown one with a chicken on it that said, “Don’t Be Chicken,” something that took me a minute to figure out as I’d received that shirt in late fall and thought at first the bird was a turkey.  I had one with an American flag on it, with raised blood drops on the red stripes.  I wore that one to a secular humanist meeting, as I wanted to know what secular humanist meetings were like, and was totally weirded out by one older man who kept twisting around in his seat to stare at me.  After whatever the talk was, by whoever was giving the talk, that man came up to me, stared at my shirt again, then figured out the logo and that there were supposed to be blood drops on the red stripes.  He apologized to me for staring, saying he thought I might be someone not friendly to their cause, the implication being that only professed religious folks would wear American flags on their shirts.

The bloodbank here has a line of t-shirts with the caption, “Life Is Unpredictable; Give Blood.”  The cartoons vary: one shows a stick figure with a safe falling on him in the first panel, then the stick figure with an IV-pole getting a blood donation.  My favorite of those is a new-ish one, with a giant octopus engulfing a ship as the unpredictable event.

Another favorite shirt was one I got when I was in the Bay Area for a bit.  It celebrated the closer of my baseball team, who was known for his beard.  The shirt had a cartoon of his beard and the logo, “Fear the Beard, Not the Blood!”  (He shall remain nameless here.  I understand the need for work that led him to sign with the enemy and so hold no personal enmity, but my bureau also no longer holds the shirt.)

Most of my t-shirts left home when I lost weight three years ago, as they were too big.  Those still in decent shape I donated, the rest went for rags or in the garbage.  My collection now is down to about a dozen.

Times changed, my bloodbank changed location, and budgets got tighter.  T-shirts are no longer given out automatically, but are reserved for apologies for Oopses.

My most recent Oops apology shirt came when I was donating platelets (my usual donation).  Things were going along just fine when, all of a sudden, my arm hurt like hell.  I called out to the lovely nurses and had two of them there within seconds.  Uh oh, that vein had blown and the donation hadn’t been quite finished.  One of the nurses explained that they could try to finish on my other arm, if I were okay with that.  I was and she poked me, but drat and blast, that vein blew immediately--the needle had gone right through.  That one didn’t hurt very much, but the nurses both grimaced and told me that the next day I was going to have a spectacular pair of bruises.

They were right.

While the one nurse was cleaning up that arm and giving me a bandage to match the first one, the second nurse left the scene, only to return moments later with my Oops t-shirt.  It’s a lovely wine-colored one, albeit a bit dull, as it lacks the funny cartoons that some have; it just has the bloodbank logo in one corner.

So how do we get t-shirts now, if our veins hold up?  We earn points with every donation, and can redeem those points.  A platelets donation is five hundred points and t-shirts are usually nine hundred points each.  Once in a while, there’ll be a special and a particular t-shirt will be available for only two hundred points.  

Recently, there was a “sale” where about six t-shirts were all available for two hundred points each.  I had several thousand points and had just been given a six-month deferral for a very low blood count, so I decided to use up the points I had and just buy the darned Kindle I’d been saving points for.  I ordered myself one each of the t-shirts that came in large, and another set of each that came in medium (as some of them fit me in medium, and others in large).  Then I used up the rest of my points to order one each that came in extra-large, for Sweetie, even though he already had a couple of them.

When I told him what I’d done, he howled with laughter, saying, “that’s the difference between us--you order one of everything to use up all your points, and I order just the one I didn’t have yet!”

Because, you see, Sweetie also donates regularly.  He gives plasma mostly, but is going in for platelets this week as someone from the bloodbank called and specifically asked him to do that.  When Sweetie and I first started seeing each other, one of the things that cracked up KidThree was that he had all the same t-shirts I did.  At one point, when he came over for dinner, she looked at his shirt and laughed, telling him, “now don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re like the male version of Mom!”  Sweetie just grinned at her and asked, “now, why would I take that the wrong way?!?”

(Sweetie told me recently that my lack of fashion sense was one of the things he likes about me.  Makes me less scary, I think.)

Sweetie told me a couple of weeks ago that I could look at the goodies to see if there was something I wanted him to get with his points, as he wasn't saving them for anything just then.  I looked and saw there was a new t-shirt at the special two hundred point rate, so I used four hundred of my five hundred remaining points to get myself one each in large and medium, then went on as Sweetie and ordered one for him, and a car sunshade and a coffee cup for myself.  The shirt is a light gray with the California Bear Flag on it and the logo, "California Blood Donor."  It's a very nice one and I think is almost my new favorite, second only to my favorite ship-snatching octopus.

And, of course, every so often, I still get a shirt in the mail from my mother.

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