A Plasma Donation Story

Like some of you fortunate few out there, I donated plasma for a small period of my life. It's an absolute bargain for students - just give away some of your body in exchange for money! And all you have to do for this money is stick a needle that's slighter larger than those used to donate blood for just an hour or so. It's quick! It's easy! It only hurts a wee bit! And as an added plus they (The Plasma People) don't tell you about, you'll often have cool stories that you can tell your grandchildren about 50 years from now.

Like this one time, after I had just given plasma, I heard their usual spiel which says something like "OK - now keep this bandaid on for 2 hours, make sure you don't lift any thing heavy with this arm..." I nodded my head vigorously at each one of these to show that I was paying attention, when really I was thinking to myself: "This nurse is really cute and attractive, maybe I should ask her out."

Pretty soon 2 hours are up, and some guys want to go swimming. I'm thinking: "Sure, it has to be OK now because they said I can take the bandaid off now." So we put on our swim trunks and head on over to the BYU swim pool to do some laps amongst other things. One guy goes off to the diving pool, while me and the other guy decide to race for a couple of laps. Down and back we went - quicker than molasses - then we popped back out of the lap pool and walked on over to the diving pool where we see our other friend getting out of the pool.

"What'd you do?" he says to us. "Oh, we just swam a quick lap back and forth."

"No - what did you DO?" and he points down at my arm.

I look down - and my right arm from the elbow down was just covered in blood. Completely covered from the elbow to the fingertips - and we look back and there's a trail of blood all the way back from one end of the pool to the other. The really weird part was that I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA that my arm had been bleeding at all until he said something.

The life guards came over with towels and went around and cleaned up the blood and asked me all sorts of fun questions like "Did you get any blood in the pool?" and "because if you did we'll have to shut the BYU pool down" which isn't really a question, it's a statement but that's okay, I didn't feel like pointing this out to them at the time. Swimtime was over for the day. And now I have a nice story to tell the grandkids over dinner, about their sweet old grandpa doing silly things in college.

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Family Fun Part 5

OK - just a couple of quick family stories for today. One was given to me word for word by my aunt. I think she tells it better than I could tell it. The other one is my Grandpa and a character whose identity shall not be revealed until the end of the story. That would give away the joke.

Story Number One
From the Mouth of Aunt Sue: Your father was about, well, he could do the exact dates, how old he was. He remembers that stuff. I was about five and he was two. I was watching I Love Lucy on the TV at the time, and he didn't want to watch Lucy. Well, actually, I think I was about eight and he was five. So he comes over and turns the TV off. And I was wearing grandma's wedding ring. I punched your father in the nose so hard that they had to take him to the hospital to stop the bleeding. And he'll never let me forget about it.

Story Number Two
Straight from Grandpa's Mouth: We were taking a vacation out to Utah in the 1950’s. And I was going to shave in the morning, and I hadn’t taken my shaving kit with me. So we went down to Salt Lake City to go to a grocery store, my brother and me to get shaving things. I saw this guy in the aisles who looked really familiar to me, and when I got the checkout he was there in line next to me. I says, “You look awfully familiar to me, but I can’t place you.” And he says, “I’m Gordon B. Hinckley from the quorum of the twelve and you’re Fred Farmer from St. Louis.” And he had been back at a stake conference in St. Louis earlier in the year so that’s where he knew me from.

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Businesses That Would Be Obsolete Without Students

We wish for this to be the first part of a series of articles. Articles that talk about businesses that would be obsolete if we students weren't here to provide labor for them. Businesses which, in order to be financially successful, require dirty, nasty, TERRIBLE work to be performed, such as will be illustrated here below.

Business Number One On Our List - TELESURVEYING

If you haven’t worked at this job yet, and you happen to live in Provo, there will be sometime when you will say to yourself, “Hmm…40 hours per week, and $8.00 per hour – I don’t care how bad it is, it’s worth it!”. If you ever catch yourself saying these words, quickly run to a phone and call up your mother or father or legal guardian, and tell them about the job you’re thinking of applying for. Soon they (the parental people), upon hearing about your new idea for a job, will start to cry and say to you, “What’s wrong? Couldn’t you find any jobs as a dishwasher?”

This job looks decent on the surface, except for a couple of minor problems. First off, when employers in Provo say you get up to 40 hours per week, that’s just as valid as those grocery sales that say “FROM AS LOW AS $3.00” where the only thing that’s on sale for $3.00 is an 8 month old freezer burnt set of Pigs Feet. In reality, you MIGHT possibly get 22 hours per week. Second off, you will spend ALL DAY LONG saying the exact same words to people, over and over and over again. Pretty soon you'll catch yourself using those words in normal daily conversations. Like from my following true life example: We did a survey for coca-cola for a month or so, where we would call up local businesses that used coke products and ask them for information on how well they liked the services. I said the same words so much that one time I called up Papa Johns to order a pizza, and when they asked, "How can I help you?" I said, "Yes, this is Michael Moore from Custom Research and I'm just calling to conduct a short surv...I'm sorry about that - I really just want to order a pizza."

You might be thinking to yourself right now, “Oh, I could do that, I’m creative with words and would be able to change the wording from time to time.” Oh, you poor misguided person! Do not EVER think that in relation to surveys. The NUMBER ONE, absolutely unbreakable rule in conducting phone surveys is: You CANNOT for ANY reason change the wording as shown you on your computer screen. If a man has a nuclear missile and is threatening to destroy the United States and start World War III unless you change the words you’re saying, you STILL can’t vary those words one bit. Oh no, that would introduce bias into the system, and that would be a travesty that could possibly destroy the universe.

But relax you Telesurveying Companies - even though I'm writing this about your company right at this moment - there is no possible way your careers are in jeopardy, because we live in Provo - The Land of People Who Are So Desperate For Any Job at Any Time That They Would Probably Even Consider Indentured Servitude As An Acceptible Career Choice.

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Hometeaching Woes

Today we bring up something that has been sure to plague all of us here at BYU: HORRIBLE HOMETEACHERS. Now many of you out there are shaking your heads and screaming, "How dare you malign such a sacred institution!" You fools! I'm not maligning hometeaching, but merely some of the weirdos that have hometaught me in the past.

We now present some of the common Hometeaching Mishaps which could happen to you and how to fix them. These are all true situations that happened to me at one time or another.

Case Number One
Your Hometeachers come in and they say, "Let's just give you a brief lesson". You look at your watch thinking, "It had darn well better be brief because I have things I have to get done like my daily dose of Seinfeld (or Simpsons or Gilmore Girls)" Soon it's been 90 minutes, and 30 minutes ago you thought it would be over soon when he said "In conclusion."

The Solution
Ward Prayer was at 8:30, so we had them come over at 8:05 or 8:15 and then we could duck out real quick for Ward Prayer.

Case Number Two
My roommate worked graveyard shifts, and consequently slept from the morning to the afternoon. Our hometeacher asked me if he would be okay to come over at 2:15, I said, "No, Norm will still be asleep then." He says, "Okay, we're coming over at 2:15" with that glint in his eye that says, 'Norm's asleep so Norm must be a sinner.' So I say to him, "NO YOU WILL NOT. THAT IS WHEN NORM SLEEPS."

Luckily for him his brain actually comprehended what I said the second time. If not I would have tried to do it with my modified version of sign language most of which consists of backhands to the face.

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Ad Critiquing

So I just had some Papa John's Perfect Pan Pizza the other day. It was most delicious and filling to my stomach. The ad for the pizza said something like the following: "When I first tried Papa John's Perfect Pan Pizza I swore off all other deep dish pizzas. The second time I tried it I swore off swearing."

The first line of this add does a marvelous job of encouraging me to buy it. However, if we were to compare the two sentences in a manner that the SAT compares phrases (Water is to fish is like crap is to congress people)then we would have to conclude something different than pleasure from the pizza. In the first sentence they (A gender-neutral pronoun to avoid offending either gender. If you are still offended, please email me at candidbyu@gmail.com, and we will deal with your offense in a manner befitting your offendedness. Notice we did not say we would apologize. If you wish for us to apologize, you must first pay us $200.00.) state that they swore off all other deep dish pizzas, which makes you understand that 'swore off' means 'gave up', 'forsook', 'did never partake of that substance again'.

Using this same meaning for 'swore off' we must conclude that the person gave up swearing. This leads me to believe that the person gave up swearing off things because, the second they tried Papa Johns Perfect Pan Pizza' the second time they realized that it wasn't all that splendid and that in fact, other deep dish pizzas that they had previously sworn off were in fact better. Luckily, for Papa Johns that is, I didn't let this ad influence me and decided to try the pizza anyway.

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Quest For a Pizza

Once a former roommate of mine was heard to remark, "I don't know which of the 7 deadly sins I like most - sloth or gluttony. I think I'll go with sluttony."

This true tale epitomizes sluttony.

I was sitting on my beautiful reclining chair with my feet up on the foot rest, having a lovely conversation with my 2 friends, when I hear this clunk, and I fall over backwards, so here I am with my back laying on the back of the chair which is laying on the ground, and my feet are sticking straight up in the air. I say to my friends, "What should I do?"

"ORDER A PIZZA!"

"Well, OK." So I got on the phone, and called up Papa John's and said, "I've fallen, and I want a pizza."

I asked them if they would deliver the pizza to me in my chair, they said that they couldn't do that. So I said, "OK", even though I wanted to say "Screw you" and then mildly hung up the phone. I then called up Pizza Pipeline (the restaurant currently known as American Pie (375-6111)) and, showing a much higher degree of customer relationship skills, agreed to deliver it to me right to my chair inside my apartment.

While I was waiting for my pizza, my friends went around telling people, "Hey, just go in that apartment and look to the right," so one girl just walks in, looks at me, points, and laughs. Other people came in to take pictures of me.

Some time later, the pizza guy FINALLY comes. Sitting in a chair is hard work for a sluttonist. My friends go to hide in the back. He knocks on the door, and I yell "Come in". He looks at me, and says, "You want some help?" I replied, "No, I just want my pizza." He says, "You want it on the table?" "No, over here." He goes to put it on the table. "Over here," I repeat to him, as giggles come in from the back. So he brings it to me, and I have my check book laying next to me, and I happily write him out a check. He then walks out of the apartment, while looking around all over the apartment as if he couldn't figure out whether or not he was dreaming.

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