Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The Census
So Dave is not exactly the type to sit down and fill out forms, I usually get that job by default, but today Dave decided he is going to fill out the 2010 Census. I guess filling it out ourselves is better than the years in the centuries prior where someone would come to the door and meet our barely speaking English immigrant ancestors; ask their name, age, and race; and then illegibly misspell the name the census worker thought they heard on their forms so that we can look it up 150 years later on ancestry.com. I digress. So Dave is filling in the info and I can see that each person is dedicated their own page. I ask him how many people can be filled in, after all, we have a large family and on other forms I usually have to add a second sheet and write, “see attached”. Luckily there are room for 12 people! If Josiah were still living at home, we’d have filled the whole thing! Hey the Larsens can fill the whole thing! Cool. I digress again. So, Dave is having trouble remembering everyone’s birthdays and I’m thinking this could be quite entertaining... so I quietly listen to him fill in the blanks... out loud. Dominic decides he’s the birthday expert and wants to help. I giggle. Dominic is feeding him wrong information. Giggle again. Other kids correct Dominic. Then Dave gets one right, and Dominic tells him he’s wrong. More kids correct him. By this point I can’t keep it in. “See how hard it is!!!” I exclaim. I just had to list all their birthdays last Friday - and I had to do it in a couple minutes. Dave so far has taken quite a few, of course his little assistant wasn’t making things any easier. Oh what a joyful and heartwarming, funny moment. At least I don’t feel like the only one with birthdate memory loss any more... :-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hi there! I filled mine out when the guy came to deliver it to me personally... did they hand deliver them in your area? We live in the sticks and so I thought maybe they HAVE to hand deliver out here. Anyway, I was thinking of you too as I was filling ours out. Thoughful of them to allow for more than the typical 4 or 5 in a household. However, I was a little taken aback by the very small amount of information that they required. I was sort of hoping that they would ask something like: "Is anyone in this household handicapped?" "If so, how many?" "Is anyone in this household blind or deaf?" You know... those sorts of questions because this is supposedly to HELP get funding (grants etc) to areas that need it to help ... and there wasn't anything about income level or value of house. No details what so ever that I remember in the last census that I actually "worked" in going out on the second round to catch those that did not return their questionaire. This is actually so simple it would be rediculous to send out a worker to do what I did in 2000.
I'm probably the only one complaining that they are not asking for more details.
I was surprised too at the limit of questions. There was such hype last year about the census asking questions like, what time to you leave for work, and come home, how many toilets in your house... dumb stuff. I didn't think it was just overexaggerated rumor, as even my congresswoman was talking about it. So I was surprised that it only asked a few things. But happy too. It was in line with traditional censuses that I see doing geneology.
Post a Comment