All These Questions!

It’s not clear when the next Census takes place, but we can presume that sometime in the next few years these fine people are going to go out and knock on a lot of doors, and predictably enough, quite a few of those doors will remain unopened.

Explanations will abound.

In an age of increasing attention to personal privacy, pundits will tell us, common folk just don’t feel comfortable giving out that kind of information anymore, all this business of asking how you are related to Person 4 in your household, and what age you were at the turn of the year.

This however is to misread the situation. These questions aren't intrusive; they're boring. They allow none of the human spirit to come shining through. In an era that elevates the individual, these questions make us feel like no more than one little cog in a mighty adding machine.

By this theory that I have developed and which is just now taking hold among the best kinds of social scientists, or it will once they cotton on to its importance to the national conversation, citizens don’t resist answering the door because the Census asks too many question, but because they ask too few.

We are an expressive society. Our opinion counts, or should, and we have a lot of them. It is all very well for the Census surveyor to ask us what the highest grade of school we attended was is and what our exact address is, but these are closed-end type queries. They give little opportunity to wedge ourselves in there and expand our thinking into the type of sweeping statements that otherwise are so much a part of the culture. 

We can imagine a conversation going much like this:

Census Guy: So your middle initial is R for Robert.

Common Citizen: Well, yes, but that is only the beginning of the story; you see, when my parents were expecting they went back and forth on possible names. You can imagine! Why, in those days you didn’t even know if you were talking a boy or a girl, so everyone had two lists.

My mother was in favor of Henry, this being in honor of my Uncle Henry, who, as is not well-known, was in on the invention of those salt and pepper shakers that are fashioned to look like farm hens, I know you’ve seen them. Only he got squeezed out of the farm hen salt shaker business just about the time that it was about to go big nationwide. And do you know what his business partner’s name was, the man who showed him the door? That’s right, it was Robert! Well, you can imagine how the fur flew when my father suggested Robert in honor of the parliamentarian Henry Robert, he of Robert’’s Rule of Order. My goodness, they went round and round about it! I’ll tell you….

Census Guy (making a note on the survey): So it’s R.

This leaves the Common Citizen frustrated and feeling unappreciated, for he has long harbored this story and has been waiting for the right minute and the right audience to get it out there.

He will never feel the same way about the government again, and for some days thereafter will go about his work in a listless manner.

You add enough of these fine people going about their work in a listless manner together and soon enough you’re talking about a measurable hit to GDP, just when we can least afford it. 

This must be the commonest thing in the world, and I think the only way around it is to introduce some questions onto the survey that gives people a chance to let off a little steam.

If it was me, why there are all sorts of things I have opinions about, and wouldn't mind at all being tossed a softball question once in a while.

Census Guy: Well that takes care of the preliminaries, now to some of the meatier questions. I presume you agree that society is going to hell in a handbasket; where would you say that civilization once and for all finally went off track?

Me: it is funny that you should mention that, I was just thinking about this the other day. You are asking, I take it, at what point did I first begin to notice that young people these days are in no way equal to the way we all were, and I certainly was, when I was their age?

Census Guy: Yes, you state that very well.

Me: (musing thoughtfully) I would have to say…I would have to say it happened when refrigerators starting making their own ice. In my youth the icebox barely kept things cold enough to keep salmonella at bay, much less to make ice. Our beverages in those days were served at room temperature at best, a low simmer at worst.

Yes, there was a definite shift in the environment, what we social scientist types call the zeitgeist, right around that time. You could almost see the moral collapse close in around you.

And my goodness, when they started putting icemakers on the very door of the refrigerator so that you didn’t even have to open the door for a piece of ice, well by that time it was clear that civilization was past recovery. The Fall of the Roman Empire had nothing on it.

Census Guy: Fine, I shall put down that it was the invention of…

Me: Well, hold up just a minute there, some other things come to mind.

You know, you used to be able to get a full set of encyclopedias at the grocery store. I’m not saying these were good encyclopedias, in fact they seemed to be missing about every third entry, but at least you could fill your shelves with them.

Lord, I haven’t seen one of those in a grocery store, let me see here, let me see, why I would say since ought-eight. There was a definite acceleration in our moral decline starting about then.

Census Guy: These are both fine ideas, if I write small I can just squeeze…

Me: Well, let’s not forget riding lawnmowers. Once those things were invented everyone raced to have one and to forego an experience that many of our Founding Fathers recommended as the best way to give a spit shine to a person’s character. I speak of course of mowing the grass with a push mower.

Census Guy: I might be able to just get that..

Me: Have I mentioned that my big brother and I had 18 lawns to mow when we were young?

Census Guy: Eighteen! Surely not per week?

Me: Yes, eighteen per week! That is the special horror of the situation. (letting the words sink in.) Per week.

And these weren’t the postage stamp-sized lawns that you get in town which barely allow for the turning around of a proper lawnmower, but entire half-acre, three-quarter-acre, and full-acre lots there on the edge of town where the urban town eases into the rural countryside.

Fast-growing grass in those parts too. Laws a mercy, many was the time when I would look back at the strip I had just mowed only to see that it had started to grow again back there at the front end. Now that’s the kind of experience that makes a young person ponder. That's the kind of experience that introduces him at an early age to the essential sadness of life.

Census Guy: You did go through a lot for one so young. Tell me more about yourself. Would you call yourself musical?

Me: Well, it is said that I have a pleasant baritone. I trust my own tastes in music, let me put it that way.

Census Guy: Well then, what do you think about today’s music?

Me: Don’t get me started! Don’t get me started!...........No, I’m just kidding. Let me tell you everything you could possibly want to know about my opinions on what they call 'music' these days. 

Well, and the conversation goes on from there and the long afternoon winds on.

Like I say, it’s a little hard to be too concerned over privacy matters when we are all spilling our guts on a regular basis on our smartphones and our social media. And if it’s a matter of juicing up the economy by putting a little steam back into each of the millions of us by simply taking the time to ask a few fundamental questions, then I am all for it.

I do have a concern however on the state of mind of these fine Census people, and recommend that they be issued earplugs before they go out into the field. This just seems like a prudent precaution.