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By Root 1038 0

chase the oranges when an old lady’s grocery bag breaks. Any good person would hardly think twice. Granted, because of where I reside (San Francisco, on a spider’s throne of fault lines); where I live (off a busy intersection without traffic lights, the site of countless fender benders); and where I work (at home, alone, which involves a fair amount of staring out the window, daydreaming), maybe I do give this more thought and put the sentiment into practice a tad more often than most. (Too eagerly, too, a certain neighbor could claim, as when I reported a fire one lovely evening last summer upon seeing flames leaping from behind the backyard fence of his building across the way. Four fire trucks converged, the building was evacuated, the street blocked off. I stepped outside into the scene I’d tipped into motion and felt a tug of war between God, I hope it’s not a bad fire and God, I hope it is. Not a lick of flame was visible from out here, so the tenants milling about wore looks of inconvenience or irritation rather than fear. I stood next to a woman in slippers cradling a bowl of goldfish when the word came: “It was just a barbecue, and some dumb stupid idiot in love with his lighter fluid.” I appreciated the fireman’s redundancy as much as his comment once he’d learned I’d made the call: “You did exactly the right thing.”) So in any event, when a call went out for Bay Area blood donors a few years ago—Urgent Need! Critical Shortage!—on TV news and in the papers, I thought, Yeah, sure, I’ll give blood. I’m perfectly healthy. Needles don’t scare me. Blood, either.

When I was growing up, a citizen’s duty to donate blood was instilled at home, school, and church. It was a patriotic gesture, like voting, only young people could also do it. That giving blood was synonymous with citizenship was a message that even made its way into one of the comic books I read as a kid. In Action Comics #403 (August 1971), the good people of Metropolis were asked to participate in a one-of-a-kind blood drive. Calling all able-bodied volunteers: Superman needs a blood transfusion! Reading it today, I have to wonder if I paid attention at all back then to the science of the story, if you can even call it science. You see, Superman is infected with a killer microorganism, a sentient menace that has set up camp in his bloodstream. With just two days to live, the Man of Steel must find a way to outconnive the conniving “Micro-Murderer.” The only solution, doctors determine, is to flush the microbe from Superman’s body using hundreds of gallons of blood. The comic-book doctors call this a transfusion, but it’s really more a circulatory system colonic. Superman makes a televised plea for blood, and the citizens of Metropolis can’t move fast enough to go donate. Having been saved countless times over by the alien Man of Steel, these everyday people are overjoyed to have a tangible way to give back.

To be honest, I’d have recalled little of this story had Steve not dug up a copy for me. The cover, on the other hand, was far more familiar, not for the striking image of Superman lying unconscious on a gurney but for the fact that the third person in line to donate blood is singer David Crosby circa the 1970 Déjà Vu album, or, at the very least, a remarkable look-alike. In front of David is a boy who looks the age I’d have been when the comic was brand new, though the kid’s on crutches and has a leg cast so I can’t help but wonder how he won the race to be first in line. For the sake of a single dramatic cover image, the artist shows the transfusion already under way. The collected blood, in a huge IV hanging over the hero’s head, is the same Superman-red as his boots, briefs, cape, and the bright S on his chest.

“Calling all able-bodied volunteers: Superman needs a blood transfusion!” (“Action Comics” #403 © 1971 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission.)

I joined the ranks of real-world blood donors as soon as I was age-eligible, sixteen. In fact, in my wallet I still carry my original Spokane Blood Bank donor card, Type A, Rh+, on