The Survey
“What’s this,” she says to me. Gerty had been watching intently a YouTube video of a Emory board grinding down the attachment to a fingernail to a sharp witch-like tip. “It’s a survey,” I said. I explained to her that I had done an assessment of my life, but my own assessment results conflicted with the results I appeared to be getting. “After thinking about it, I discovered the flaw in my assessment was that I was evaluating myself. It was biased from the start.” Somehow I know that asking Gerty to complete a survey about me would find itself into the survey itself if she even bothered to complete the survey at all. “Really, Robert, a survey?” I expected Gerty not to understand. After all, she was a high school art teacher. I don’t ever remember preparing exams for her students. I wouldn’t be surprised if she just drew grades out of a hat for her students. Gerty was my wife. She says that I’m her “life partner.” “Yes,” I said. Her reaction almost mirrored the sto