McKayla Burns of Columbus, Ohio was barred from her high school’s annual blood drive after falling short of the 110-pound minimum last Thursday. “I’m so sorry for all who were affected,” says Burns, sobbing on the school’s front steps. “If I had known this would happen, I totally would have eaten more.”
Upon hearing the news that she was too close to society’s ideal of feminine beauty to donate blood, Burns fell to the floor in shock, knocking over several bags of other donors’ blood. She was offered several packages of Oreos and Fig Newtons, which only made her feel worse. “They told me, ‘Eat a cookie.’ Like I’ve never heard that before.”
Burns laments her inability to assist those in need, due to her body being that of a wood sprite. “Just ‘cause I’d be a liability to the blood bank doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings.”
This isn’t the first time Burns has been too close to perfection to be charitable: “In elementary school, they wouldn’t let me volunteer at the soup kitchen because I was ‘too young.’ Excuse me for being the Hollywood ideal!”
After pressing the nurses further with questions such as, “Could you maybe just use my friend Fat Nancy’s blood and say it’s mine since she has so much of it?” the volunteers confessed that there were other issues in addition to Burns’ petite physique.
“Honestly,” sighed nurse practitioner Joanne Connelly, “McKayla’s blood, even when she’s about 20 pounds up, is essentially pumping a bag of vodka cranberries with a few white blood cells into a sick person.”
When volunteers were finally able to remove Burns from the premises, she relaxed over a bloody mary and a plasma screen, which she asserts is “the closest I’ll get to donating blood for now, I guess.”
