He was a friendly and helpful guy who was just trying to make a living performing a public service. He did not design the form, nor did he come up with the questions that the government wanted answered. He took the time to talk to me about how this all works and convinced me when he said he understood my feelings but that completing the form is required by law.
There are hills I am willing to die upon but filling out a census form is not one of them.
I lived there with my two daughters, and I rented a room to Big John. Big John had suffered a brain injury in a motorcycle accident. He told me he was running from the police when he crashed. I didn't know much about his family history. My daughters were in middle school and high school. I was in my early forties.
One of the questions that most bothers me has to do with nationality. I am an American by nationality. I am native to this land even if my ancestors were not. The ancestors who did immigrate to America did so in the 1800s. I didn't know them, and I don't relate to their nations of origin, which are several. All of the ancestors that immigrated here did so from western Europe.
There was not an "American" option, except for "American Indian." Family lore has it that one ancestor, my maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother, was indigenous to this country, but that is such a small slice of my lineage that it doesn't even count. I could not be "American" or "white." I had to choose a European nation to represent my identity.
I recalled a joke I had heard and decided to use it to explain my uncertainty.
I told him that in school our teacher had asked us our nationalities. My friend Joe raised his hand. "I'm African-American," he said. My friend Alfred raised his hand and told her, "I'm Native American." I didn't know what I was, so I went home and asked my mom.
"We are German, Swiss, English, Irish, French, Polish, and Italian," she said. I asked her why we have so many nationalities. She said, "You know the French. They'll screw anybody."
I told the census taker to put me down as French.
"Okay," he said. "Then that would make your daughters French, too, right?"
I told him to make us Germans.
