Lawyers and Biology...Do Not Mix

I have a confession.

I know nothing about rocket science, chemistry or physics.

I was a Political Science, English, and History major.

However, I did take biology in the tenth grade.

In fact, my blood type is A+.

Back in the days before AIDS was an issue (so, I'm thirty-eight), one of the labs in biology was to determine blood type with litmus paper. To perform our experiments, we were issued little pointed tools to plunge into our fingers to make them bleed, as well as different colored slips of tiny paper on which to put droplets of blood to observe reactions and determine blood types.

Note, we were not offered latex gloves. The only other items provided were alcohol wipes and band-aids.

Now that I think about it, I probably contracted hepatitis...

In any event, there was this guy named Darrin in my class. He was an obnoxious sort and after everyone chose their respective lab partners, he was, not surprisingly, the odd man out.

Unfortunately for me, my partner and I were one of the first people finished with typing our blood and Darrin asked me to help him as he was having great difficulty poking himself in the finger. He kept stabbing himself, but was not doing it hard enough to actually break the skin.

Wimp.

I begged off because we still needed to clean our station; however, my disloyal lab partner volunteered to do it for us and I was left to assist gross guy.

I realize "gross" and "obnoxious" may well be generic terms, but they so fail to do justice to Darrin. The poor guy was one of those persecuted souls that no one liked. His appearance and aromatic body habitus aside, he was loud, a know-it-all when he knew nothing, and spit all over everyone and everything whenever he spoke. He was altogether an odious and objectionable human.

Add to the mix he had the most annoying habit of following me around.

To say the very least, Darrin was not on my top 2000 list of favorite humans. Secondly, I was easily annoyed back then and had something of a temper.

I declined to assist Darrin with his experiment, but my rejection was overheard by the Biology teacher, Coach Allgood. That was when things turned all bad, at least for poor Darrin. Coach insisted I assist and while most of the rest of the class pointed and snickered, I grabbed his hand, cleaned off one of his offensive fingers, took the cap off the needle, and plunged it forceably into his appendage.

I could not have predicted what would next transpire.

The poor boy dropped to his knees in pain then keeled over in a dead faint at the sight of his own blood.

There really wasn't that much blood, but apparently it was far too much for him.

I learned two things from this experience:

All and all, I think it went very well.