Slush

If anyone ever believed that we are all unique, and that we are, each and every one of us, a beautiful snowflake of individuality in a blizzard of human existence, they should work as a research worker doing social and academic phone interviews for non-profit organizations, and speak with Canadians all across the country, and thereby learn that there is rarely anyone who seems remotely separate from the homogeneous masses.

Whenever anyone thinks they are making a lighthearted comment or a joke, it is always one I have heard a thousand times before. If a person thinks they have a clever retort ("Why don't you give me your phone number so I can call you?"), I know it came from the same Seinfeld episode I've seen on rerun, and that it was a witticism way back in about 1993.

And so I have reached the point that when I know I am speaking with someone that I might as well have spoken to before, given the lack of individuality, I find that my reserve of patience has slightly dwindled.

Here are some people I have spoken to far too many times:

1. Your name is usually Douglas or Gordon, and your wife selects you as a respondent but not without warning first that "my husband hates surveys, he'll just slam down the phone on you dear". Ironically your wife is always a sweetie, and completely willing to be compliant, and we have to carefully explain why we can't speak with her. But we can never get a hold of you anyways because you are usually out hunting or fishing or working on your truck. If we do manage to speak with you, you always behave as if you know exactly what we're calling about, but always manage to display your deep and fettered lack of intelligence by missing the point completely. I want to slam the phone down on you.

2. It is pathetic that you are a woman living in what seems to be in constant fear of your husband. "I can't stay on the line too long in case my husband calls the house". "My husband will wonder who I'm talking to, and I'm interested in your study but I just don't want to have to explain to him." "I'd love to chat but my husband will be home soon and wanting his supper. Can you call back on Saturday afternoon? He'll be out bowling with the boys then." Do you . . . realize what you sound like? I can find it in my heart to feel sorry for you if you sound at least old enough to have at least started off as a housewife in the 50s, maybe the early 60s. But if you sound at all like you came of age, married, had children, all that, in the post-60s and feminist era, I find it difficult to tolerate you.

3. Just about anyone from anywhere in B___ County, Ontario. You say things like, "We're just honest-to-goodness folk here and we don't want to be harassed by you big city know-alls" and use double negatives as in "We don't know nothing about public health issues" (which, in fact, means that you do know a thing or two about them) or "We don't know nothin' 'bout no health department" which is a triple negative and I don't even want to start trying to figure out what it means because I have no desire to become fluent in Moron. I find it difficult to believe that when researchers say they want broad opinions and random samples of the population that they are really talking about you. There are always kids screaming in the background and everyone sounds like they come from a trailer park in Arkansas, which is weird because this is Canada. Like, how do you all manage to sound so stereotypically white trash? Is there a class you go to at the adult learning centre which is mandatory for anyone finishing their high school diploma at age 25 because they were too busy getting stoned and having teenage pregnancies to pass math class? You make me believe more strongly than ever that we desperately need to re-open the issue of selected human sterilization.

4. Eighteen-year-old girls who take forever on the phone because they drag everything out with uuummmmmmm and liiiiiike . Or, similarly, eighteen-year-old boys who dunno what their opinion is about anything or whether tomato juice counts as a serving of fruit juice, "Since, you know, it's not fruit, right? And juice is made from fruits. So what's tomato juice then?" Do any of you realize what kind of impression you make on people? Perhaps I'm being harsh, but I know that I was nothing like that as a teenager. I was too busy trying to decipher the meaning behind The Fountainhead. P.S. A tomato is totally a fruit. It ripens off the vine. Fruit just rots. Schooled.

I wish desperately for floods and forest fires in your vicinities, and hold out everyday for the one-in-thousands opportunity I get to converse with intelligent, witty, category-defying and original members of the general population.