I’ve flexed before about having the world’s best blood type: O-negative. For some reason, all niceties around boasting vanish in the face of this natural-born superiority. If the “first-responder” rubber bracelet they sent me matched any of my clothes (how could it? It’s the colour of blood), I would definitely wear it everywhere I go.
Last week, though, for the third time, I got turned away from donating because my iron wasn’t high enough. It was low only by a margin, and this is normally acknowledged as just natural human variation, but they operate quite a strict three-strikes rule, and now I can’t even present my (also pretty superior) veins again for a full two years.
The nurse shook her head. “It’s such a shame, what with you being …” “Right? O-negative! How many people could you say that about?” “Well, a fair amount,” she said, “probably everyone else in here; you’re the ones we’re always calling. Do you sleep well?” I considered this. I sleep incredibly well, but not for very long, preferring, broadly speaking, the time I spend awake. You can’t grow up in a Thatcherite era without imbibing some ideas, and I decided as a teenager that five hours a night was the right amount. It’s relatively harmless; at least I don’t want to privatise anything.
“What about your diet, are you eating enough vegetables?” Again, I reflected on this, impartially, as if I were regarding the habits of a stranger. I do eat vegetables, in the sense that there’s none I don’t like – but I also eat a lot of crisps, and there must be some displacement there, some nutritional events that could have been kale but instead were flavoured cheese and onion.
“Stop eating crisps!” the nurse said, exasperated. “You’re O-negative.” I never really saw it as an issue of custodianship, this blood I have. I just thought it was a thing I was good at.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
