The assumptive close

"Hello, this is Bob calling from the American Red Cross. Is this Michael Troy?" "Yeah, that's me," I allowed. "We have opportunities every day next week for you to give blood. What day is good for you?" He didn't miss a beat. It was the perfect assumptive close. So I signed up.

Today I went in to their facility on University Drive in Durham. It was nice and spacious and, since I had come in early, I basically had the run of the place. The young lady (Alina, I think) who did my intake and then also took my blood was apparently fairly new to the process, because the guy who was overseeing her had her walk through the steps before she did it. She had it right. It all went fine.

While I was lying there with blood draining out of my arm, we discussed my need for some new furniture up here in my study. They agreed that it was entirely meet and right that I should have some new stuff and that it would be generally quite safe for Mary to accompany me to High Point on a weekday to shop for it, due to the large size of the showrooms.

Alina apparently was doing some furniture shopping of her own, because her roommate is a pig and it is high time for her boyfriend and her to be the hell out of there. Apparently Alina's dog had also chewed on a book containing the sole, handwritten copies of some of her roommate's poems (she fancies herself a poet), which didn't go over well with the roommate, though the poems themselves had gone down smoothly for the pup.

Afterwards, I was cooling out in the "lounge" having some water and NutterButters (followed by a few Cheez-Its), this other donor came in. She was from Mebane, a working class gal who apparently gave blood frequently out of gratitude for her daughter, who had overcome leukemia. When I heard she was from Mebane, I asked her feelings about Buc-ees having withdrawn its application for the world's biggest filling station/convenience store. She said she didn't know a whole lot about it, but had heard there would be jobs there. Gives a bit of a different perspective on the issue. I didn't like the looks of the place, but honestly it's not like I drive by there more than twice a year, so it wouldn't have been a ton of skin off my ass, personally, so I had stayed out of it.