Have a heart? Then donate

Several times a year, students have the chance to save up to three lives in roughly 30 minutes. The beauty of it is that all you need to do is sit in a chair and squeeze a rubber ball. Yep, that's it. You even get to miss class for it, and you can grab some free oreos and fig newtons when you're finished. Yet so many of us, most of us, pretty much all of us, don't bother to donate blood when the opportunity comes knocking. Instead, we sit in class and shudder as we look at the kid next to us, sporting hot pink medical tape on his elbow, and give the classic, lame-o excuse: "I'm afraid of needles."
I've got news for you--most people don't like needles. Most people who donate blood don't like needles. In fact, most of the people who do like needles are in jail or drug rehab.
Face it like a grown up: you haven't had a neurological procedure involving spinal cord or brain between 1972 and 1989. You don't work in a abattoir (you probably don't know what that is. Neither did I, but it's not as exciting or as scandalous as it sounds). You've never had Ross River fever. You haven't slept with someone who has lived in the Isle of Man or Whales in the past 12 months. Creuzfelt-Jakob Disease does not run in your family. Give up and give life. You don't have an excuse not to donate!
In a worst-case-scenario, you might hurt a little and you could get a bruise. I survived the worst donating experience possible, but heck, the eight-inch, tri-color bruise was fun to show off! And lo and behold, it went away, and I'm a perfectly happy and healthy seventeen year-old once again. Nine times out of ten, you'll donate without feeling anything but the initial prick. But in the rare case that the donation process doesn't go ideally, you aren't going to die. But someone else awaiting blood donation might if you choose to hold back.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple, but blood donation is one of those occasions where it is both. The excuses high school students make for themselves are ridiculous. Granted, a handful of us may have medical conditions. I'll take that. But plain-old fear of being poked is irrational, immature, and unfounded. Stop making excuses, and do what you can to change the world.