Pins and Needles

Here I sit,
in a waiting room of all places
Waiting to be poked
With a needle and
Like a vampire
It takes away my blood

What is it about needles that scare me? Why is it that every time I hear the words "shot" or "blood drawn" I start shaking in my boots? As of now I'm sitting in the waiting room of doom. Here I decided, would I rather be in a DMV? Maybe. But as I sit here I begin to recall a memory that's very clear in my mind, and seems to be getting even more clear as the time passes, and I wait for what's about to come.
   It was August. I was five, about to turn six and my mom and I were in getting me registered for school. This was a big time of my life! Everything was new, and big and strange. I took to everything with a terrified shyness, hiding behind my mom every time a teacher teacher tried to speak a word to me. But as it came time for the last steps of registration, after we had met all of the teachers and had filled out allot of papers, my mother brought me into what seems to be a torture room for children 6 and under.
   Kids clung to their parents with tears streaming down their face, their sleeves rolled up. I looked up at the horror taking place in front of me. What was this terrible place? Why had she brought me here? Did she love me? I remember a boy in front of me with a runny nose and puffy eyes and suddenly my heart began to race. My logic was, if a BOY was crying then what ever they were about to do had to be painful. It wasn't until the nurse beside us began whispering me assurances, that I decided everything was just an elaborate scheme that they were all planning against me.
   These people obviously had set me up! They put me in a trap to intentionally cause me pain, and they didn't want me to know it before it was too late. But I would not be so easily fooled. As I walked up to the lady with the so called "needle" in her hand, I was already puffy eyed and snot nosed at the thought that pain was about to be inflicted.
   My mother brought me to the nurse and she examined a place where she could insert the vaccine.
"Her arms are too skinny, I'll have to put the shots in her thighs"
   My eyes got wide and my body froze. What was this mutiny?! Between my mom trying to pull down my elastic waist-ed jeans, and holding me down, and what seemed to be loud words of encouragement, I sobbed and was even more terrified than before. But as the nurse began to prepare the needle as I sat on my mothers lap with my pants ashamedly pulled down and she pinned me to her, my mom began to cover my eyes! The horror! They had caught me with my trousers down, pinned me against my will, and now they were covering my eyes, telling me not to look! Who did they think they were? All of a sudden, all I could feel was four cold needles, WAM WAM WAM WAM! Jammed into my thighs and I screamed. I felt the pain from the medicine numb my thighs. As we tried to walk out I began to fall, and I felt nothing but numbness as my knees buckled under me.
   That day, that terrible day has scarred me forever. And now as I sit in the chair about to get my blood draw I smile. This won't hurt at all....
 (Warning: This story may be more dramatic than actual occurrence) I was five.  What can I say?