Megan Stielstra's Blog

Dear Mr. Zogby,

The only time I’ve been polled was in Chicago on the corner of Oak and Rush. You’ve been there, right? It’s pretty fancy-schmancy, all Gucci and Versace and high-end high-heels (which I don’t wear. See, I’m a schoolteacher and a waitress, so too much of shoes like that and my toes’d be scrambled by the end of the week, you know? I have Pumas. Blue ones). Anyway, there’s this diner a few blocks over called Johnny Rockets which is the only place in the city to get a decent milkshake and after, I was walking back to my car when this guy appeared out of nowhere and said, “Can I ask you about your hair?”

He was pretty, like out of a magazine ad: super-hip faded jeans and white starched T-shirt—seriously, starched! A T-shirt! And I mean really white, this is a guy who gets his whites white!—and very lovely red hair with very perfect red spikes. And me? I’m … low-maintenance. I had on Osh-Gosh from the thrift store and a tank-top—I’m not so good with the whites, FYI—and my hair was blonde up until I discovered Manic Panic—that’s hair dye in very bright colors, Mr. Zogby, red and blue and pink—but ever since I graduated college it’s been sort of … gray, and there’s a lot of it. At work, I wear it tied back, but that day? the day I was polled? it was down, blowing in my face and irritating the crap out of me. Maybe that’s why I said “sure” to that guy. He had great hair, and I told him so.

“It’s because of—THIS!” he said, and on the THIS he pulled a bottle out of the clear blue sky, all TADA!

“What’s that?” I asked.

He told me some brand name—I don’t remember which—and then he said, “You’re going to try it—RIGHT NOW!”

Now, this next part is a bit surreal, Mr. Zogby, but stay with me: out of the same nowhere that he’d pulled the bottle, there came more guys, all perfectly dressed, all with great hair. One had a basin, another, towels—there was even a faucet on a hose—and suddenly, I’m standing there on the corner of Oak and Rush with my head underwater. Fingers massaged creams and gels and goops into my scalp. There was much rinsing and repeating. Where is all the water coming from? I wondered. Am I plugged into a fire hydrant? I don’t know how long I was down there but the blood was rushing to my head from too much time upside-down and the whole time, they asked questions: “What do you think about the texture?” “What do you think about the manageability?” “What do you think about the conditioning?” and, after it was over—after I was toweled off, my hair brushed through and dripping on the sidewalk between Barney’s and Prada,—they surrounded me and asked, “What do you think about the difference?”

I asked what difference they referred to.

“The difference between THIS—” they gestured to their bottle—“and whatever you were using BEFORE!”

I ran my hands through my hair.

“Well?” they insisted. They were eager and excited, leaning forward and poised with clipboards to document my response.

Real quick: at the restaurant where I work weekends, we’ve got a crab sandwich. People are all the time asking, “How’s the crab?” and I say, “great,” because everyone says its great, even though I don’t much like crab. The reality is, the crab is the most expensive thing on the menu, so I get tipped at a higher percentage, which I need to pay back my college loans. I only bring this up, Mr. Zogby, to show that truth isn’t a simple thing, even though maybe it should be. Maybe we should try telling the truth. Like I should say, “The crab sucks,” even if then they get the turkey, which is five bucks less. That was my thinking when those guys asked me about the shampoo. I looked at them all perfectly matched and styled like some boy band, and said, “It feels the same to me.”

The silence was great.

“I’m sorry,” I told them. “It’s the truth.”

In unison, they all straightened up, their chiseled features contorted horribly (no one, Mr. Zogby—NO ONE—can shoot a dirty look like a pretty boy). They picked up their basin and their hoses, their tubes and their bottles, and one-by-one stalked into the nearest department store. Just before the last one disappeared, he tossed his head and said, “We don’t care what you think ANYWAY.”

One could say, Mr. Zogby, that after that experience I was a bit turned off to the whole poll thing. But recently, with everything that’s been going on in the world, I find myself a bit concerned. There’s all these What Do You Think questions in the news these days, like “What do you think about the current administration?” and, “What do you think about the war in Iraq?” and, “What do you think about FEMA?” and the answers to these questions are proceeded with the words Polls Show That. The thing of it is, these polls—these numbers and percentages and graphs—don’t represent me, and since I know YOU care what I think what with you being in charge of the biggest pollster in the country, I’d like to cordially invite you to poll me.

I think what happened was, my target market was overlooked. The lower-middle class? Mid-to-late twenties, college graduates taking second jobs? Some of us are artists, some supporting older parents or younger kids? Most of us pay health insurance out-of-pocket, our gas bills are skyrocketing—are we sounding familiar to you, Mr. Zogby? I called up the people at Gallup to point out the oversight, and they referred me to a recent poll they’d done about polling that said the public polled about their polls found those polls to be accurate as polled, and how do you argue with that? So I thought, maybe you’d be interested in polling someone like me. I thought it’d be easiest if I came to your office at Zogby International, but the address wasn’t listed so here’s a compromise: I’ll be at the corner of Rush and Oak—Wednesday? How’s Wednesday for you?—and you can ask me whatever questions you’re asking people about this world we all live in.

You’ll be able to recognize me, easy. I’m the one with the hair.