Cleaning up around the house before Thanksgiving, I pulled my old high school yearbook off the shelf to kill a few minutes reminiscing. What fell out from between the pages made me snicker. In this book was a piece of sophomore biology class memorabilia that I had thought about over the years, but was sure that I would never see again. It was from a lab experiment in which the assignment was to determine our own blood type.

Needless to say, there were a few in the class who were not looking forward to that day. Brother Daniel, the teacher, assured us all that no one would be exempted; we were all going to determine our own blood types, using our own freshly drawn blood, and there would be no exceptions.

What had fallen from my yearbook was an extra blood lancet that had survived for three decades among the images of me and my ninety-four classmates.

My dx came when I was 23, several years after graduating high school, so this story predates my first diabetes-related experiences with lancets and lancet devices. I’ve taken a little good natured heat over the fact that I still use a very old Ames Autolet lancet device in 2007, but these crude, paper-wrapped implements that were distributed to my high school pals and me to use on our own fingers make my Autolet look like space age high technology.

This evil looking tool is 100% sheet metal, stamped by the thousands from coils of thin gage stock on an industrial punch press, and sandwiched inside a paper wrapper. It might have been considered advanced technology around the time when the last Whig occupied the White House.

The class assembled in the lab that day, and Brother Dan instructed us to pierce our fingers quickly, and not linger like frightened grade school children. Hesitating would only make matters worse. He also said that if any of us could not accomplish the task, we were to go to him for help, and he would draw our blood for us. I still remember his exact, French-Canadian accented words.

“I do it . . . (he paused to look us in the eyes) . . . painlessly.”

Before long, one squeamish kid who could not bring himself to pierce his own fingertip sought help from our pedagogue, and I’ll wager a month’s grocery money that kid remembers what happened in excruciating detail. Brother Daniel laid the lancet flat onto the meaty part of the student’s fingerprint, and literally “can opened” the flesh like you would a can of broth. As the room filled with the poor kid’s tormented cries of anguish, and Brother Dan’s order that he not be “such a sissy,” every last one of us immediately mustered the courage to come up with our own little sample of our own blood on our own terms, thank you.

“. . . painlessly.”

So the lesson of the day was learned quite well. And no, it had nothing to do with blood types – I sincerely doubt if any of us could recall what we looked at that day through our microscopes. Rather, this class of sophomore biology students learned unexpectedly about the sometimes chilling consequences of believing everything we hear.