Karl Klockars

In the spring of 1990, an envelope appeared in the mailbox of my parents’ suburban home.  It was from the government.  Apparently, there was something called a Senn-Suss that came around every now and again, and then my Mom handed the envelope to me and explained that the President and his friends in Congress wanted to ask us a few questions.

The idea that the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT was interested in what exactly was going on underneath our roof was fascinating to me, and I couldn’t wait to dive headfirst into exactly what was packaged inside that huge envelope – all the way from Washington! – and get cracking on telling Mr. President exactly who lived at our house, their age, their race, and everything else.  The idea of governmental intrusion into our peaceful domicile didn’t even cross my innocent little brain.

Try and imagine a goofy-looking, scrawny, pre-pubescent blonde kid with a bad haircut getting excited about filling out a government form.  Kinda ridiculous, right?  It was completely ridiculous.  And yet…it was fun.  Now try and imagine a kid happy to find any reason to spend a warm April afternoon sitting at the dining room table with his Mom, feeling like a grownup because you’re responsible for something that adults usually do.

I have since tracked down (read: checked Wikipedia) the Long Form Census of 1990. [pdf.] It all came flooding back to me.  Fill in the box questions!  Enter the number questions!  Scantron!  If you have an aversion to Scantron tests hammered into your head from a childhood of standardized testing, I’m sorry.  My experience was that I could haul ass through these easy tests and then draw pictures of Ninja Turtles or play with stencils or something while everyone else caught up.  I basically peaked in junior high.

And oh, the question answering process.  What kind of fuel is used to heat this home?  Where do you get your water from?  Do you have a telephone?  How many vehicles does the household have?  What were the total sales of agricultural products from this household?  Could a person in the household have taken a job if offered last week?  So many questions!  So much to learn!  So much to find out about this place I live in!

So many things to consider – is there a house around here that uses kerosene or propane for heat?  Is there someone who doesn’t have complete plumbing?  It was an embarassment of informational riches for a ten year old kid who’s just a little nerdy and gets a kick out of things like this.  For others, it’d be the same as homework.  For me?  Excitement.  Maybe I should have gone into statistics, aside from the fact that I abhor math for the most part.

Flash forward to this dramatically futuristic year of 2010.  No jetpacks, no flying cars, no teleportation devices (and why do all our visions of the future have to do with transportation?) and on my short-form version of the census, there were 2 basic questions that I had to answer. Who are you, and who else lives with you?  Oh, and give us some basic info on you, too, please and thank you.

What a disappointment.

I was ready to blame our previous president for this, naturally.  But I’ll pre-emptively take it back – it turns out there’s a short form list and a long form, which I didn’t learn until this morning and now I’m glad I didn’t go off half cocked about the anti-Government right wing killing all the “fun” stuff of the Census.  That would have been wrong, and if anyone else is in the same boat as I am, hold your little census-loving horses and dial back the vitriol.

So, what do I have to do to get the Long Form?  Even now, 20 years later, I enjoy the idea that all of these weird little factoids are important to us as a society, that our government really does need to know about the flush toilet in our apartment, that people are actually interesting to people other than me.  When I was taking a computer-assisted reporting class, I totally geeked out on poking through census databases and didn’t think about this angle of it.  Now I get it.  I understand where it comes from.

And people like Michelle Bachmann are afraid that the Socialist Communist Fascist Dictatorship Obama Administration is making this an intrusion into our god-given privacy and no one should fill out the census.  I mean, even though it’s in the everdamned Constitution? And the Founding Fathers put it there?  Did anyone remind these anti-census types of that?  Sure, she’s putting in how many people are in her home – but that’s it.  So give her the short form.  I’ll take the long one.

I’d be happy to be part of the snapshot of our culture.  It only happens once a decade.  I mean, everyone goes crazy about the Olympics and they happen all the time, comparatively.  Why wouldn’t anyone be willing to help figure out exactly who gets what seats in the House?  Where federal funds end up going?  Who’s really that terrified of filling out a form that comes right to your house, and you send it right back out again?  Why are people so terrified?

Just get yourself a pen, and if it’s an option, find yourself a ten year old kid like myself.  You know, not off the street or anything – just in your family.  Don’t get all creepy on me.  Then spend a sunny afternoon learning more about your household as a family.  I’m sorry this is ending up very after-school special or PSA like, but really.  If you’re that scared of a census, you might as well be terrified of the Post Office.