Da Butcha

I'm considering creating a list of life-goals. I think it could be handy if I ever lose my way; just pull out the ol' list and mosey on to the next line. But perhaps I wouldn't accomplish some and I'd feel like a failure, or my interests could change but I wouldn't want to change my life goals list.

Anyways, I think one item on there has to be compiling some sort of volume of my dad's stories. He has a story for every occasion, and he tells them, so goddamn much in fact that he has a story about how one of his friends, tired of hearing his stories over and over again, took to interrupting him ten words in with a line like "Oh, this is number 33. He locks himself out of the house and has to dig through the snow to find the key." And he would be right.

SO: When my dad was in college, he and his buddies had a set-up for about six months where they would give blood twice a week to earn their food and beer money. Seems like a perfectly reasonable plan, right? Well, there was this one nurse who worked at the clinic who was notorious for her ineptitude at finding a vein. She would stick people again and again before she got the needle in right. Thusly had she earned the nickname "The Butcher."

So my dad and his friends were all down at the clinic, sitting in the waiting room and eating the free cookies, and the first one called is my dad's buddy Rory. Rory goes in and sees that he got...the Butcher. He starts to shake a little bit as he sits down and she puts the tourniquet on his arm. The rest of the crew sees their friend in need, so naturally, they crowd around the glass door to watch him suffer. The Butcher takes the needle and sticks it in Rory's arm...nothing. She pulls it out and tries again. And again. And Rory is just losing it, and my dad and his friends are rolling on the floor, and she has to stick him SEVEN times before she gets a good vein. JESUS CHRIST.



P.S.: Suggest some life-goals for me. Right now I have "have kids" and "write a book."