I seldom speak to telemarketers or survey-takers any more. My caller ID warns me when it’s one of those folks and if I’m too distracted to read the display, there’s always that tell-tale silence after I answer – while the “system” informs some minimum-wage caller that a live one has spoken – and when that caller begins I try to close the connection firmly but without rudeness.

Seldom isn’t always, though. I’ve fielded the “just a few minutes to gather your opinion” inquiry enough to write this about it.

Don’t survey me. Don’t collect my opinions. Because I know a little bit about statistics, and it will be a waste of our time.

That’s because the researchers are going to plot the responses on a graph. The line of the graph will form a shape we call the bell curve; there will be a few responses at the far short ends of the line but most answers are going to cluster in the fat middle section, reaching for the top of the graph. The folks who analyze the survey have been taught to disregard the short edge parts of the shape.

My answers are going to be at the far end of the bell. Disregarded. Really. I don’t drive a car. I don’t like to shop. I don’t eat most meats. I avoid the medical industry like it’s the plague. I love to live alone. I tend to view problems differently than most. Interviewing me will be a waste of my time and the surveyor’s – I’ll be disregarded and discarded.

Really? Yeah. And yet …

I exert undue influence. I don’t mean to, but I have a large personality and a good vocabulary. I like people. I do lunch well. I am by no means a world-shaker or any kind of celebrity, but I’d be speaking falsely if I didn’t admit that people have strong reactions to me, and those reactions often produce behavior that might otherwise not have occurred.

And I’m small stuff. Consider some of the acknowledged shakers of our species. Individuals like Leonardo, Franklin, Payne and Twain. Do you think their responses to telemarketing surveys would fall inside the bell curve?