I can't go to the polls but I have the right to be polled.
By William Wetherall
Tomorrow's election day and the phone's been ringing more than usual. Half the time it's not for me.
"Is your wife there?" I'm often asked by a voice I recognize as that of a telemarketer.
It's almost always a woman. No man has ever asked me if my wife was home. Wives are supposed to be home and husbands at work. No one hires men to make calls and ask women who pick up, "Is your husband there?"
"Not that I know of," is my usual reply.
Which is not to say I don't have a wife, or didn't have one, or wouldn't want one. Simply that, if I did have one, and if she was home, I wasn't aware of her presence -- which might qualify her as a model wife.
Most telemarketers say goodbye at this point. A few ask more questions and get similar answers. The most persistent eventually give up. Hopefully they check the "Nut case" box and delete my number from their list.
Wrong numbers
Other callers are ordinary people who have punched the wrong numbers. One such call resulted in this conversation.
"Is Yoshie there?" a man said after some hesitation.
"No," I said. The same guy had called just a few minutes before. Then he had said "Oh, I'm sorry" and cut the line after I said "Hello."
"You sure?" he said.
"No Yoshie here. What number are you calling?"
He told me. I told him mine was 2, not 3. He needed to stretch his right thumb a bit more to reach the 3.
"I thought you might be a rival," he joked, then twice apologized and cut the line. I never heard from him again.
I was tempted to call Yoshie. Instead I wrote a short story about a guy who almost got himself killed finding a wife that way.
Wrong people
I've gotten several calls from pollsters over the years, but this is the first time I've been hit by election pollsters. Two have called this month, on the eve of what may be the most important election in Japanese history this year.
The first pollster said she was calling on behalf of the Mainichi, a national paper. Could she ask my views of the parties, candidates, and issues? Sure, I said. Did I intend to vote? No. Why not? I'm an alien and didn't have the right to vote.
She said she was truly sorry about that and cut the line. I felt sorry for her. The next person could be a woman who tells her she's only nineteen. And the next a man who says "What election?"
The second pollster represented NHK, the "public" broadcast corporation that thinks it has the right to force payment of a monthly viewer fee for every TV set in every home, office, hospital, hotel, or corrugated cardboard shack.
Her not-unpleasant voice kept flowing despite my efforts to jump in as soon as I heard the word "election". I thought for a moment it might be a recording, but no, there was something human about the affect. Finally I said something that caused her to stop midstream.
"Yes?" she said.
"I'm not qualified to vote."
"You're too young?"
"Nope. I turned twenty 48 years ago."
"Are you a, a . . ."
"Felon? No."
"Or in a . . ."
"Mental hospital? No."
"Then you must be a . . ."
"Foreigner? Yes."
"Really! Do you speak English?"
"A little," I said, affecting as much modesty as I could.
Follow-up polls
We talked for half a minute -- a long time when you count out thirty seconds. She'd spent a week in California. Where? Disneyland, Universal Studios. Never been there. Really! I'm from San Francisco and don't know much about the south. She had spent two nights there, ridden a cable car, been to Fisherman's Wharf. That's nice. So had I.
She had work to do, an hourly quota to make, a supervisor monitoring her calls. I too had other things to do, not necessarily more interesting than talking to her.
The election tomorrow may change who sits where in the chambers of the Diet, and who speaks for Japan at daily press conferences. Whether the government itself changes awaits to be seen.
I'm waiting for a post-election pollster to call.
"What do you think of the new government?"
"What new government?"
29 August 2009
