A number of years ago (shortly after my divorce was final) I had to fill out one of those forms which includes the question of "marital status". Well, as far as I'm concerned there are only two relevant options - married or single. That's it. Period. And I feel rather strongly about this. So, when I came to this question I marked "single" because, despite the fact that there was a "divorced" option, I was single. Didn't matter how I came to be that way...I.was.single.
Anyway, I get into the room with the Nazi nurse (oh yeah, it was a medical facility by the way) and she's looking over my form. She gets to that question and looks down her judgmental nose at me and says, "you've never been married?" with disgust present in her voice.
"Yes I have," I said. "But I'm single now."
"Divorced?" she asked.
"I don't see how that's relevant. I'm single."
We got into a very heated discussion about the "accuracy" of my responses. I challenged why it mattered and she spewed out some garbage about the health of a person based on their marital status. That resulted in me going off on a tangent about people who have been married more than once. One of my sisters had been widowed but was remarried. Did she need to check both boxes, I asked. And would someone like say, Elizabeth Taylor, have to put eight (or however many) X's next to married AND divorced? I also wanted to know about those that were unhappily married...why wasn't their a box slotted for them? On and on I went. In the end I admitted to being divorced but said that I WAS SINGLE!!!!! My little card came back with a WFD for white, female, DIVORCED. I was so pissed off.
Now, I'm looking at a form for my jury duty. It has the options of married, single, divorced or widowed. I'm having the same rebellious response to this question. I'M FRIGGIN' SINGLE!!!!! AND I LIKE IT! So leave me the @$%&*@ alone! I'm seriously considering marking through the divorced and widowed options and just marking single. Or just leaving it blank. I'm just a little worried either of those would come back to bite me in the backside though. But it's definitely pushing some of my buttons (or couldn't you tell?).
It's married or single people. There are no other options!!!!!
So that's one of my big pet peeves in life. What pushes your buttons?
2 comments:
I don't like the questions that identify us by race and gender. I realize it's for marketing purposes or government tallies or whatever, but why can't there just be a box to check that says "human"? That should sum it up.
I so totally agree with you Lucy!
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