a group chat

over the weekend you said that either mondays or thursdays work for your schedule. you always keep your word with the team, communicating every time you won’t be there. but then you remember that you have a haircut on thursday. it’s long overdue and your stylist is booked weeks out. it can’t wait. you don’t say anything when the topic of practice comes up on wednesday. that’s another thing. you’re weirdly prompt about answering messages in the chat. then on thursday, there’s a blood drive at work. you have to help out because your manager had to have emergency kidney surgery over the weekend. at 10:30 with black coffee as the only thing in your system, you go to check it out, with the plan to wait until after you eat lunch to donate—you are helping set up after all. turns out norma, your best friend at work who’s a 61-year-old mexican woman who calls you allegria, already did it. they make you register, prick your finger, and ask twice if you ate breakfast-“yes”. fifteen minutes later you’re down a pint of blood. “no vigorous exercise today” they tell you twice again while you drink apple juice and eat a bag of kettle chips. more chatter of practice. now you debate whether to say you donated blood today and thus cannot play soccer. more noble than vanity. the t-shirts say you saved three lives.