特别的户口普查

那些人口普查员整日守在路旁“虎视眈眈”，我一出现，他们就冲过来抓住我，企图挖走我的一切私人信息。那可是我的隐私，凭什么要告诉他们？听，他们又来敲门了。别妄想了，我绝对不会给他们开门的。反正我已经把百叶窗关上了，他们不知道我在家。我以为等他们走了就万事大吉了。可是有一天，Carla来了……

By John Gifford

吴悠 选 张健 注

We’d heard they were coming—with their clipboards and questions, their staid government sedans, roving the street like hungry bears, sniffing out information. They seemed so nosy, so insensitively insistent, the census takers. And for what? So they could update some bloated publication better used as a doorstop?

Already I was irritated by the thought of having to divulge so much personal information, but when Judy, our friend across the street, told us she’d spent more than half an hour the previous evening answering a census taker’s questions, that did it for me. I locked the front door. I closed the blinds . And when the knock finally came, I didn’t answer.

“They’ll be back,” my wife, Ellen, said.

Of course they would. That’s what frustrated me. It wasn’t that I had anything to hide; it was just the thought of being interrogated about my private life by someone I didn’t know. Could they appreciate how that felt, these intrusive data collectors?

After several more days of refusing to answer the door, I let my guard down one afternoon and walked out to the car. The census taker spotted me and sprinted across three lawns to catch up. I was stunned . I was angry. Why did they need my data? Couldn’t the government just skip my house?

Evidently not. The census taker stood there, harried and huffing, flipping through papers on his clipboard. He’d been trying all week to catch me and, now that he had, he wasn’t leaving.

Determined to keep my private life private from these government wolves, I told the man I would not answer his questions. He glared at me, but to no avail. Eventually, he walked away, but I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it.

“Great!” Ellen said, when I told her. “They’ve probably put us on some list!”

“He said we’d hear from his boss,” I told her.

“See!?”

“He seemed frazzled ,” I said. “I think he was just bluffing .”

He wasn’t.

A week went by, then another. All my neighbors had answered their census questions, the staid government sedans had disappeared, and a sense of normalcy was returning to the neighborhood. Then one afternoon there came a knock at the door. I answered to find a plump, middle-aged lady on my porch, a briefcase in one hand and a shiny badge in the other. Suddenly, I realized my mistake. My heart jabbed at my chest while my mind screamed: You idiot! Why couldn’t you just roll with it? I swallowed hard, vaguely aware that I was sweating.

“I’m Carla with the US Census Bureau,” she said, introducing herself the way the male census official had weeks earlier. Only there was something different about Carla. She reminded me of my aunt Mary. She hadn’t sprinted across three lawns to accost me. And, most important, she was smiling.

So I let her in, offered her a bottle of water, and waited for the barrage of questions. But first, she asked about my wife and 2-year-old son, whose photos she’d spotted on the wall. Then Carla told me about her own kids and grandkids and where they were living and what they were doing. I learned a lot about Carla, as she was in no hurry to get to the interview or, once it began, to end it. She was pleasant and relaxed. And so was I. Something about Carla just put me at ease .

After about an hour, she put away her papers and we visited a few minutes more. Then she thanked me for the water and said goodbye, waving as she climbed into her car. I didn’t mind her visit at all, I realized. Or the following one, three months later. Or the next.

“She’s made you her special project,” Ellen joked, laughing.

Maybe she had. Carla would call or stop by every few months, asking if our information had changed. We always talked about our families and lives. It was as if we were friends.

Later, to my surprise, I received a Christmas card from Carla. “Have enjoyed getting to know you, John,” she’d written. “Merry Christmas to you and your family.”

Not long afterward we moved to a new city, and I lost touch with Carla, whom, I realize now, I was fortunate to have met. She taught me, better than anyone, that a smile can unlock any door.

Vocabulary

1. census: 人口普查。

2. clipboard: 带夹写字板；staid: 严肃的，古板的；sedan: 厢式轿车；rove: 漫游，徘徊；sniff out: 发现，寻找。

3. nosy: 爱管闲事的，喜欢打听的；insensitively: 无知觉地，不敏感地。

4. 为了更新那些言过其实的、用作门档更合适的印刷资料？bloated: 言过其实的；doorstop: （保持门敞开或防止门关过猛的）制门器。

5. 因为要泄露这么多的个人信息，我其实已经很生气了；但是当我们的朋友——住在街对面的朱迪——告诉我们她前一天晚上花了多半个小时回答人口普查员的问题时，我的的确确是被激怒了。irritate: 使恼怒，使烦躁；divulge: 泄露，透露。

6. blind: 百叶窗。

7. frustrate: 使灰心，使沮丧。

8. interrogate: 审问，盘问。

9. intrusive: 打扰的，侵扰的。

10. let guard down: 放松警惕。

11. spot: v. 发现；sprint: 冲刺，快跑；lawn: 草地，草坪。

12. stunned: 受惊的。

13. harried: 忙碌不堪的；huff: 喷气，深呼吸；flip through: 快速翻阅，浏览。

14. glare at: 瞪眼，怒视；to no avail: 毫无用处，没效果。

15. frazzled: 疲惫的。

16. bluff: 吓唬，虚张声势。

17. normalcy: 正常状态，常态。

18. 我打开门，看见门廊前站着一位胖胖的中年女士，一手拎着文件包，一手拿着锃亮的徽章。plump: 丰满的，胖乎乎的；porch: 门廊；briefcase: 公文包；badge: 徽章，证章。

19. jab at: 猛戳。

20. swallow: （常因为紧张或恐惧而）做吞咽动作，咽口水；vaguely: 隐约地；sweat: 出汗，流汗。

21. US Census Bureau: 美国人口普查局。

22. accost: （唐突地或带有威胁性地）走近跟……攀谈，与……搭讪。

23. barrage of: 一连串，接二连三。

24. at ease: 自在，不拘束。

25. visit: 交谈。

（来源：英语学习杂志 编辑：丹妮）