Person #1

Today I filled out my US census form.  I gotta say, the thing cracked me up.  It’s like the thing was written by idiots to confuse idiots, even I got a little confused and I’m just slightly idiotic.  I can at least read.  I can imagine what a time this must be for some households though.

As I’m sure you know each person in the household has 7 questions to be answered:

1. Name
2. Relation to person #1
3. Sex
4. Age and Birthdate
5. If the person is Hispanic
6. If they’re not Hispanic, what race are they
7. If they sometimes stay somewhere else…

Questions 5 and 6 absolutely SLAY me – if you’re not Hispanic then what the hell are you?  And two of the options on there are Guamanian or Chamorro along with 8 other varieties of asian but not surprisingly NO mention of any kind of middle eastern descent.  I guess they figure it best if you just don’t mention that, even though with the state of our alarmist government I think they would want to know exactly where each Pakistani or Iraqi person lives as apposed to each Native Hawiian or whatever the hell a Chamorro is (wasn’t that a Pokemon? I know, I know, racial sensitivity training…).

The funniest part was the form has space to enter up to 12 people but only persons 1-6 have a full 7 question form to fill out.  Persons 7-12 only get Name, age, sex, and a yes or no if they’re related to person #1.  At the top it says “we may call for additional information on them” though, so I guess if person #9 is really important they should have been person #5 instead.

What a decisive pecking order this must create in a large household though, like how do mormons and muslims decide which wife is person #2?  I wonder how many polygamous husbands had the whole hen house hovering over them when he filled out the form, beads of sweat dripping down his forhead as his pencil lead breaks on the first letter of Person #2 first name.