Altruism is my middle name.

Now don't get me wrong, I like to help mankind and do my part to keep the world green, and save the rain forests and the whales, and eat soy bean sprouts and use solar power, and love a lot of people and sell a lot of flowers just as much as any of the other long haired freaky people I hang out with down at the bar on Friday Nights.

I'm a regular Euell Gibbons of the new millennium. Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Granola Coalition Earth Day, spokesman, that's me.

I am all about the greater good, adding to the benefit of humanity, even if it is at great personal sacrifice and all that other stuff.

But even I, in my moments of great nobility, have my moments of weakness.

Like today for instance.

I signed up to do a medical research study. Now, I was hoping it would be one where I was asked to try a new very potent painkiller to see if the psychedelic side affects were really long term or not, but it was nothing that exotic.

Basically, it involved an hour of answering questions about my lifestyle, and then allowing them to take 60 c.c.'s of blood. No big deal.

When I signed up, they indicated that this was a paid study, and that for my time I would get a Meijer gift card. Cool, I thought. Everyone can use a few dollars to spend on groceries.

So, I fasted from midnight on the day of the study, dragged my butt out of bed at some ghastly hour of the morning and drove halfway across the country in the rain to get there in time for their ridiculously early appointment. (translation, I had to be in Ann Arbor by 8:30 am.)
I finished the study and the woman asked me if I wanted them to mail me a check, or just give me cash.

I told her that either one would be fine, but that I thought that I was going to get a Meijer gift card.

She said that they just put that in the details to discourage people who are just doing the study for the money.

OK. So here was where I had to stop and think.

I know I am a great humanitarian and all, but do I really come across as someone who would get up in the middle of the night and trek through the wilderness to get my blood drawn all for the greater good of humanity?

Do I really strike people as that altruistic?

If so, I think it's time to work on my image.