Lake Chipican Questionnaire v.3

Not that I was looking for trouble, you know. Up to then, I’d always had a kind of risk-adjacent approach to life. I liked to be next to risk, but not actively involved in it. A coat holder, a calculator of odds, an explainer of motives, a taker of notes.

So that day when all the other obsessive-compulsives went out looking for the Questionnaire, the Original, the One True, I decided I’d tag along, to see what I could see.

Even before that day, rumours about the Questionnaire had bounced around. Even the local cable TV channel speculated about it, at the end of the news, along with Nessie and Unidentified Arial Phenomena. The anchor chuckled, peeked over her glasses, and tossed to the weather reporter. “What do you think?” she asked. “Well, well, huh,” summed up his thoughts on the matter.

Many others, though, took the Questionnaire seriously indeed. For instance, an assembly of dissident Vegetarians had reportedly sacrificed a carrot in their preparatory Quest for the Q ritual.

And after the Dig – that’s what they called it, the Dig — there were arguments in public establishments downtown, mostly too loud according to the mayor’s office and the merchants’ Shop Local association. Some of the squabblers maintained the Original was kept hidden by big government or big business or the International Copyrighters Association. Some said, “Nonsense,” there never was any such thing as the Original, just a bunch of Versions like it was with the historical Old Ones — the two editions of the Proust and the countless iterations of the Pivot. Objective analysts pointed out that some of the v.3 questions migrated from the Old Ones. Many said, “Whatever,” this “upstart” Questionnaire v.3 was “too new to be special, let alone righteous.”

On Dig Day, there I was, sneakers and backpack and old hat, clomping along, taking notes. When the others turned over the rocks by the Lake, all they found were more rocks. Not this kid. True, I didn’t find the Original, but I did manage to trip over what has become known as the Lake Chipican Questionnaire, v.3.

Would v.3, provide us with insights into the humanity of another person the way predecessors claimed to do? I decided to give it a test run and asked a good friend of mine, an honest and courageous person I know very well, to answer the questions. Here’s how it went.

Lake Chipican Questionnaire v.3.

Name
On the advice of a Bylaw Enforcement Officer (“just in case”) – I will use the handle ‘perchcrick’.

Height
Was 5’11 & 3/4” or so, but since my disk did whatever it did, now closer to 5’11”. So I can no longer say “About 6 feet”.