I did something heroic today, and you can too.

I gave a pint of blood. 

Yeah, I'm not that jazzed about needles.  I get a little woozy and I have to be careful to drink something cold and fizzy while I'm donating.  My dang finger hurts where they stuck me.  I do it anyway. 

We can't all pull children out of burning buildings or raging rivers or something appropriately "heroic," but it doesn't matter one bit.  It's the cumulative effect that makes a difference.

The proudest I think I've ever been as a human being was standing outside our local blood donation center after September 11 and seeing a line of people looped twice around the parking lot waiting to donate blood.  There was a local caterer who had pulled up, unannounced and uninvited, in front and was handling out snacks and drinks to everyone waiting in line.  In the end, the Red Cross had to turn people away because there were simply too many people and not enough time.  There were lines like this across the country.

There's a crisis every second.  Someone's in an automobile accident, or a child needs treatment for leukemia, or an organ is transplanted.  Surgeries are postponed because there's not enough blood in reserve in case something goes wrong.  This is real and we can all help, every eight weeks, by bearing with a needle stick and about an hour.

In the United States, only 5% of the eligible (eligible, not total) population gives blood on anything approaching a regular basis.  Don't wait for an emergency or a disaster.  Somebody needs you badly right now.

Find blood drive or a donation center, and make a difference.

If I sound like a commercial, I feel like one.  And you know what?  I'm okay with that.  I've got my next appointment scheduled eight weeks from today.