Representative

Last Saturday, I bussed out to my hometown to attend the Washington Democratic caucuses. Nerd that I am, it was super exciting to see hundreds of people taking time out of their Saturdays to state who they think should be the next president. I am often negative about my hometown, but my perceptions were changed. It was much more diverse racially than I remember (which would probably not be the case if I was at the Republican caucus), but still a strange place. I was shocked by the number of people who did not know what ‘LGBT’ stood for. Apparently the Democratic Party wanted to see how diverse the party is.

I brought Obama ’08 stickers and handed them out to fellow Barack supporters. I wanted to be a delegate to the legislative district and county conventions. There were six of us vying for five spots. My brother thinks that my generosity with the stickers and my relative youth would have guaranteed me a spot as a delegate, but I opted for alternate status. My inability to vote at the conventions will be compensated for by being able to guiltlessly leave if the proceedings bore me to tears.

--

This morning, I participated in The National Center for Health Statistics National Survey of Family Growth. An eccentrically dressed prone-to-over-sharing woman asked me about my sexual and reproductive history, opinions on sexual behavior, and family background. It was mildly interesting and I was paid $40 for my 45 minutes.

The interviewer kept saying that my answers represent thousands and I should be honest as possible. I don’t feel like I am a particularly representative person; I hope the sample size is large. As I answered, I kept thinking of what sort of correlations researchers might find based on my answers:

- People who have been tested for HIV because they needed a negative test to get a visa are more likely to want to have children someday.
- Unitarian-Universalists (their hyphen, not mine) are more likely to think that same-sex relationships are ‘all right’ (again, their words).
- Women whose mothers were 28 when she had her first child are more likely to have moved many times in the past 7 years.

Or something. I’ll be interested in seeing the results when they come out.