I am not St. Christopher Buxton

I approached a door in a working class neighborhood to see if they qualified for my child survey. “Hi,” I said, “I’m here to find out if there are any children in this household.”

The lady who answered the door was wearing a green sweater dress. As I spoke to her I tried to keep eyhe contact, but her head was tilted kind of funny. I then realized that she had only one eye. The other eye was just a white space that seemed locked.

“No children here,” She said, “Just in my belly.” She rubbed the front of the sweater and there did appear to be a bulge. “Ronald put it there.” I could see Ronald in the behind her in the living room watching TV. He seemed to not care about me. A ball game was playing.

“My baby will have two eyes,” She said still with her head cocked to keep me full in her vision. “They will truly be able to see the things I cannot.”

I was standing in line at a grocery store and there was an older woman behind me. I looked into her cart and she was buying three pounds of bacon. I said to her “That’s a lot of bacon.”

She glanced at it and said “I don’t eat bacon for religions reasons. This is for my son-in-law.”

I understood this to mean that she was Jewish. I then told her that the best bacon I ever ate was in a synagogue. It was made with beef and it was a perfect combination of beef, fat and smoke flavor. I had to restrain myself as I was part of the serving staff but I couldn’t help it. Soon the Rabbi caught me and told me to go set the tables.

The lady smiled at that. “It’s fun being a carnivore,” She said.

A few weeks ago I approached a household to ascertain if anyone in the household qualified for the survey. A man answered the door and was very polite. He answered my questions which identified someone else in the household who qualified for the survey. He went to ask her for cooperation, but she said no. Because of the layout of the household I could see him approach her at a table in dining room. A few days later I tried again and when I approached the front door I saw it was open with only a screen door between me and my respondent who was sitting at the same table. I knocked politely on the screen door. She got up, marched firmly to the front door and slammed it into my face.

I approach a household Sunday morning at noon in a semi-rural area to conduct an interview. The home is on a large lot which included two outbuildings. A man answers door wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. I explain why I am there but he does not care and shooes me away. I come back two days later in the evening and his wife answers the door. She says “No surveys,” and slams the door. Because this was a rural house with a long driveway I had driven to their front door. I took a few minutes to fire up my electronics and enter the data from my latest contact. While doing so the guy from Sunday shows up at my car window and asks what’s going on. I pitch him and gain cooperation. Later I interview his wife on the back porch of their estate overlooking grape vines and sweet corn stubble while being sucked dry by pregnant mosquitoes. I gave her sixty dollars.

I approached a randomly selected household to conduct an interview. There are several people at home and I try to explain to them why I am there only to discover that they apparently do not speak English. A young woman appears who does speak English without an accent and then explains that she doesn’t live there and that the people who do don’t speak English. The next day I contact a different household in the area. The guy answers a couple questions with a thick accent and then calls for someone inside the house to help him with the pesky interviewer. It’s the same young woman from the day before.