giving blood with a laugh

Today was my day to give blood at the Red Cross. I do this fairly frequently. In fact, by their records today was my 84th blood donation. Most of the time when I give blood it's a fairly straightforward event. I sign in, read all the pages of information I'm given, go through having my temperature, blood pressure, iron level and pulse checked and answer questions on the computer. Then they prep my arm, stick in the needle, draw the blood and hey, presto, I'm done except for the snack after. Today though they were training some new hires and everybody seemed to be in a silly mood. One thing they do is ask your name at least four times through the whole process. The man in the chair next to me figured that this was because he had been there so long that maybe his name had changed. He also figured he might be having an out of body experience because they seemed to forget which chair he was in for a while. The young man who took all my vital statistics announced to the group at large at one point that he had been raised in a circus family. Based on his behavior, I believed him. The young lady who was assigned to draw my blood was a trainee although she assured me that she used to work at a plasma donor site and had drawn blood over 1000 times. She did a fine job once she actually got around to drawing my blood but had to prep the injection site three times before she got it right. It's not a complicated job. One only swabs the injection site with alcohol then rubs an Iodine swab over the spot for 30 seconds. The first time she did it, while being observed by her "trainer", the blood pressure cuff was too close to the area and contaminated it. Second time, she leaned over the site to reach for something and contaminated the site again. Third time was the charm and the blood started flowing just like it was supposed to - until the end when they tried to fill the six little test tubes.  My blood had stopped flowing. They finally realized that they had relaxed the blood pressure cuff too soon.
I will go back in eight weeks to give blood again, but it probably won't be as laugh-filled as today's experience was. It may be faster though.