Since the weather outside has me watching Waterworld not as a terrible movie, but as an instruction manual, I thought tonight I'd complete my census form.
Like many people my age, I was very much looking forward to this moment. After all, this is the first decade when we've lived alone. We are no longer beholden to our parents (By the way, Dad, I need rent money again).
We get to fill out a census form FOR THE FIRST TIME. Isn't that awesome? We're grown-ups! We are directly influencing how our Congressional Districts get redistricted! Power to the people!
Which is why I was so damn disappointed.
This took me less than two minutes to fill out. Less than two minutes! I put on an album on my iTunes, ready for the long haul, and did not even make it through the first half of the first song!
After I put down my name, age, and the fact that I was Mexican, I was done. That's it? I thought, staring at the completed form with unbelieving eyes. That's it? After all the hoopla, exhortations, and parades, that was it? I was done?
The Census Bureau sent me a friggin letter informing me that they would be sending me a census form! Such redundancy has not been seen since they abolished the Redundancy Department of Redundancies and it was eliminated. Even Warcraft has a more detailed census, for God's sake.
This was incredibly anticlimactic. It was as if we learned that Christina Hendricks was posing naked in a new movie and then we all went and saw it and then when she took off her bra a whole thing of paper fell out.
GODDAMNIT, THIS MIGHT HAVE BEEN MY LAST CENSUS FORM. If I'm still in America in ten years, I'll be living under the sea, so none of this will matter.
So this was it for me, census bureau. And you didn't even have the decency to ask me whether I went to college, anything about my criminal record or whether I put down my knife and transfer the fork to my right hand before I eat a piece of steak? Don't you want to know anything about me? Am I just a face in the crowd? Dammit, America, why don't you care?
For the record, yes, no comment, and of course not. Why would you waste the time?
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