Oh, mine is actually more innocuous than it sounds. I was stationed in Spain (Rota) for three years. I found out a few years ago they won't let anyone who lived in Europe during a certain period donate blood for the fear of Mad Cow from eating of the beef there. It's funny, because we used to joke that all the Spanish beef was "dirt fed" because it was so tough and stringy. I never figured when I got stationed there that a meal I didn't even enjoy was going to end up with the repercussions it did.

Still, the drabble works on other levels that I like because unless you're familiar with just that, it does sound quite sinister. And, even with the knowledge, it doesn't change the fact that any one action on your part during life can have consequences you might never, ever foresee.

I can't believe we've never done blood!

Hmm. I will have to ruminate on this for a while, but Aimee! Loved yours.

And Deb, god, 18. There's a girl here at work who's 18, it's her summer before college, and she's sweet and innocent and doing makeovers with her friends and watching "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" and thinking it's all right.

I'm thinking that 18 was 15 years ago now, and I was learning about teeth during sex, and hangovers and cheap booze and betrayal and myself.

I'm always amazed at what 15-year-olds are supposed to know. I was a clueless, amorphous lump until I hit college, when all the anonymous facts finally got a framework to relate to.

College was an ephipany for me; I met people who actually thought I was interesting and smart and funny.

High school was a fiery pit of hell and blunder.

What Erin said.

High school was why I immediately saw the metaphor in Buffy. I would have rather dealt with a giant snake.

Maybe I was just a late bloomer, but I don't remember any hormonal dramas associated with high school, at least on my part. The high school Peyton Place shows and movies just boggle me. Maybe my classmates were seething in a cauldron of sexual urges and activities, but all I ever felt was an odd sort of detachment with the suspicion that I was missing something. It never occurred to me that guys and girls were getting up to anything together.

I actually don't regret this. By the time I hit college I was able to rationally consider what I wanted to do with guys instead of just getting washed away in a flood of lust.

Blood Drabble

By the time I sit down, half of the party is there. These are women you hear before you see, especially when it's time to celebrate.

They all order without restraint- wine, beer, a cocktail. This is a party after all. My mother's eyes are on me.

"I'll have a margarita, too. Salt, on the rocks."

I don't want to look at her, but I know what she's thinking. Blood always tells.

I was like Connie, probably. Except looking for people who Would Appreciate Me...maybe this is it? I haven't changed as much as I would like.

The "school epiphany" thing always fascinates me, because my life was so very much down a different road. By the time I was eighteen, I was a hundred and three. In certain ways, I had to make myself get younger as I got older. Travel helps with that, a lot of it.

One thing I was very naive about at eighteen was suicide. I didn't know you were supposed to slash vertically, so I went horizontal. Deep, but it slowed things down. The water got pretty frickin' pink, though.

Sail, I can't donate blood for that same reason, even if they'd take my blood without the other reasons to not take it (allergies, et al). I moved back to the States in 1981, but we were back and forth to Europe seven or eight times between '81 and '93. And we're carnivores.