Stories from the Census

The thing is, I haven’t always been a grown-up with a full-time job and insurance.

First, I was a baby. And then for a long time, I was a student. I was very good at being a student, and I loved it, and I never wanted to stop, because what if I wasn’t good at anything else? But then the University of Tulsa ejected me from its warm nurturing bosom, and I had to start figuring out how to be a grown-up.

It was what I like to call a “process.”

But if there’s one thing I know about being a grown-up, it’s that it’s very expensive. Money is a must. And as my parents failed to teach me any practical skills for participating in the underground economy (carjacking, drug-dealing, etc.), I had to find some legitimate way of getting my hands on some cash.

Luckily, the year was 2010: the year of the Olympics, an oil spill, a lunar eclipse, and Dwayne Johnson’s breakout role as the tooth fairy in… Tooth Fairy. It was also the year of the 2010 Census.

In short: desperate for work, I passed the Census test (“How would you put the following names in alphabetical order?”) with flying colors and was offered a job as an enumerator (yes, a door-knocker) for the summer.

I soon learned that when you knock on strangers’ doors, strange things can happen. That’s why they’re called strangers. I would like to share a few of those stories with the World Wide Web in the coming weeks. I hope you're ready!