So the prophetic is happening, the two major candidates for President are running neck-and-neck; a rather disquieting image. Frankly, I'll be overjoyed when Wednesday, Nov 7th finally arrives so we and others can get back to actually doing things to improve our economy and our natural environment, rather than having candidates obliquely talking about how to achieve other, fabricated goals. I'll also greatly appreciate being free of useless phone-bank solicitations to vote for proposition Q or state senator Jones and stop killing any more trees for candidates' lawn signs and bulk mail election-day appeals.
Because of the presidential race's closeness in key states, we have been hearing-seeing-reading "experts" state it will be decided by these swing states' voters of any number of specific colors and types. These people types include blue-collar white men, black folks, non-Cuban Hispanics, women with and without B.A.'s, young people, old people and suburban Walmart customers. Did I leave anyone out? Surprisingly, I have yet to hear any mention that the election could be decided by votes of 23 to 41 year-old agnostic soybean farmers in the upper mid-west. You get the idea; the talking heads have gone way, way beyond well-known (but now boring) generational labels like Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y.
Despite frenetic media dispatches that hype voter super-segmentation, the election will be decided (as always) by voters of every color, type, age and persuasion. The more, the merrier.
These efforts to subdivide citizens got me thinking how to more interestingly categorize our impressively diverse population. Forget red republicans and blue democrats, especially in these last all-too- politically-focused days. So I've come up with a couple of ideas, beyond soybeans, for classifying people based on my on-going observations of the public at large in my very narrow slice of America.
v Visor types. Haven't you noticed? There are 5 types of visor people.
Ø Visor-less folks – those who don't wear hats, a seemingly ever-smaller minority, given trends over the recent past.
Ø Curved-visor folks – those who wear baseball caps whose visors are curved. Think of these people as "traditionalists" in the baseball cap wearer scheme of things; CVFs are more likely over 31, some of whom have spent a fair amount of time carefully curving their cap's visor just so to hyperbolic perfection. Quite impressive, yes?
Ø Straight-visor folks – those who wear baseball caps whose visors are completely straight across, and often adorned with various mostly round stickers. The vast majority of the SVFs are much younger than CVFs, mostly school- and college-age under 25. Perhaps a chronologic dividing line?
Ø Twisters – a subset of CVFs and SVFs who rotate their caps so the visor is not directly aligned with their face. There are roughly 175 ways to characterize these people – starting with those who subtlety "displace" their cap only 5 degrees away from "normal" alignment, to those who wear their visor directly behind their head, covering their neck (aka, 180ers). My observations indicate the correlation between twisters and CVFs is less than that of twisters and SVFs.
Ø Fedora folks and porkpiers – so far a minority of hatters, but growing; those who wear either a renewed-classic fedora or a renewed-classic porkpie hat. Yes, they're once again back in style, just like they were more than 60 years ago. One of my regrets as we closed my parents' home was not having kept at least one of my father's fine fedora hats that he faithfully wore to work when (and after) they were in great mid-century style.
Ø Wristwatchers – people who wear wristwatches. This used to include virtually everyone who wanted to keep personal track of the time. Wristwatches became very popular in the 1920's when the multi-century era of pocket watches ran out of time. Digital wristwatches were introduced in the 1970's. Most wristwatchers, being right-handed, wear their watches on their left wrist. Why are there no right-wrist-compatible watches for left-handed folks? So it goes.
Ø Timeless wristers – with the advent of first-generation mobile-cell phones in the 1980s, it became possible for people to know the time using their cell phone rather than wearing a wristwatch. As cell phone saturation rapidly grew after 2000 (by 2010 there were over 6 billion cell phone subscribers on Earth, led by China Mobile with 500 million customers), more and more wrists were (once more) timeless. Again, demographics play a noticeable role in this characterization. Younger, cell-phone carrying people have far more timeless wrists, to the significant consternation of volume watch manufacturers like Timex and Casio. Timeless wristers instead often become…
Ø Braceletters – many wrists hold bracelets of hugely different designs, functions and forms. Traditionally, braceletters were mainly female, but with the (once again) growing appearance of male jewelry, more male wrists are being surrounded by bracelets and other non-chronometric adornments.
v Glass halvers. You've met these two types of people in a variety of circumstances and places.
Ø Optimistas – folks who have a natural predilection for believing the glass is at least half-full and will soon get fuller. These people are much more interesting to be around and generally have brightened many a day for me.
Ø Pessimistas – people who believe the glass is half-empty (at best) for any number of reasons, some semi-obvious, more very obscure. In the extreme, they can have trouble believing the sun will rise again tomorrow no matter what kind of bracelet they are wearing. They're not really fun to socialize with for any extended period of time, and can seem to be mad hatters. If you discern that someone nearby is a pessimista, I'd suggest filling their glass completely full, just on general principle, and hope for a momentary conversion.
One final observation. This week, Sherry reminded all of us once again of an eternal truth: Mother nature bats last. And, in the words of Wendell Barry, “Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.” I hope we do right in remembering this on Nov 6th and 7th as well as every day thereafter.
Onward to voting (if you haven't already); as a CVF, wristwatched optimista, I'm hoping for the best…
[1] I initially considered a 4th category – naked wristers – but at this point in time there seems to be an overwhelmingly strong aversion to nakedness, wrist-wise. At least one wrist is usually "covered"(if only with a rubber band), so I dropped it as a possible category.
No comments:
Post a Comment