Finding Flow

As an accomplice to my denial re: being employed, I have found myself shamelessly bouncing from one short term gig to another, with increasing gap lengths in between. The day after my position as "depressed teenager cashier" ended, I had to wake up bright and early the next day to attend the orientation of my next soul-torturing project. As advertised in the local newspaper, I signed up to become an official census taker in our fine city. Someone needs to literally go door to door to hand-count citizens, prodding them for the ever so interesting details of their lives.. and that person is going to be me. This officially contradicts my 8 month old pact with myself to never to work for "The City" ever again. This sand-solid pact was made upon last summers "summer-intern" incident. For those who are unaware, I spent an entire summer stationed in a office building lunchroom, responsible for creating City maps on a complex computer program.. sans computer. I kept this up for around 6 weeks until I realized that I could still continue to pull in my $20/hour salary from my couch at home, or suntanning in the backyard. All facts and mental breakdowns aside, desperate times call for desperate measures. When I arrived at the training session, I realized I had forgotten my photo ID, as I was greeted with a gigantic poster likely constructed by 10 paid City employees over a 2 week period. I explained to the woman who greeted me of my mistake, and waited for her to go consult her manager. "We just need to confirm that your not just some stranger off the street." I had to hold back my immediate reaction of "why would somebody fake their identity so that they could go door to door counting residents for questionable pay?" However I was left speechless by her next statement being, "and to make sure that your actually of legal age." After sweet talking the secretary into believing that I was 18, and not a complete dead beat off the street on a secret mission to sabotage the accuracy of the Calgary census results, I went into the orientation room, greeted by an ideal grab bag of people. I obviously picked the seat next to the most senile looking senior I could spot. The bright mismatched clothing, and excessive collection of useless materials, made this an easy decision. This decision payed off almost immediately when the orientation captain introduced herself and the program, and my neighbor shouted out "Where did you say we were?" How did this person even make it to this hole in the wall industrial park anyhow? I pondered. I wondered if he was ID'ed on his way in- and if they missed the red-insanity sticker that should be placed on the identification of a nut cases. Throughout the session my senior buddy was shooting ridiculous questions at the poor information speaker, and often nudged me making sure I was keeping up. Everytime we were instructed to go into our "census" pouches for an item, he would say to me "You heard the woman, get the orange one out.. no time to waste!" The only moment that rivaled this one, was when the entire room erupted into a heated debate on whether or not Co-op housing was considered rental properties, or owned ones. The woman in the back row, who practically had granola spilling out of her ears lived in a Co-op property, and fought this battle to the bitter end, insisting she was a home-owner, and worked damn hard to be considered one. I wish I had "Your Irrelevant" stickers to stick to characters like these.

I almost think the City census would be most accurate if more "strangers" wandered in from the streets, eager to do good deeds. I hope there is a post-census meeting to hear about how the majority of these people tried to complete their census routes using the yellow pages.




B