Don't be afraid to stand up to insulting forms!

Filling out forms has become increasingly difficult these past few years. Difficult, and insulting.

Oh, the insult is subtle and easily deniable should anyone call the form-makers to task on the matter, but make no mistake, the insult is there.

Most folks encounter their first form in elementary school. These forms are simple: name, age, names of parents, maybe address and phone number. At age eight or nine, that's all you're expected to know.

Forms don't start getting really ugly until your freshman year of high school. That's when they start asking questions about your hopes, dreams, goals and aspirations. They still want your parents' names and phone numbers, but they're digging deeper now, trying to get to the "real you." They do this so the school's guidance counselor can help you choose the right classes, career, girlfriend and so on.

College forms are worse still, especially those pertaining to financial aid.  Mine were, at least. They were so complex I never realized I could have purchased a nice home in Beverly Hills for less money than I borrowed on my student loans. This fact became apparent about six months after graduation, when the student loan people showed up at my front door wearing brass knuckles and carrying a bucket full of wet cement.

Fortunately, my brilliant academic career landed me a job as a janitor, so I was able to pay off those loans in no time...about two months before my youngest child graduated high school.

The forms I filled out in the Air Force also were confusing, especially the one I filled out at the recruitment office. Turns out they can fit quite a bit of stuff in that small print at the end of the 20-page document, stuff they would really rather you not read.

But I'm digressing here, as I usually do. The point I was trying to make somewhere six or seven paragraphs back is this: the forms I filled out in the past, though sometimes arcane and complicated, were at least not insulting. The forms I've filled out lately, all online now, are. Insulting, I mean.

How are the insulting? Well, like I said, it's subtle. The questions they're asking, I no longer like to answer. For instance, when I was 26, back during the Renaissance, I didn't mind listing my age. These days I do.

I'm not ashamed of my geriatric predilection, but online forms always use those pull-down menus. A lot of time can pass between the instant I click on the "year" box and the moment it scrolls down to my birth year. Along the way, the font generally changes from a clean sans serif to Olde English; a font the form-makers think will be more familiar to folks of a certain age. The typeface also gets larger, ostensibly to make it easier for geezers to see.

See? Insulting, right?

I recently filled out a form on which they asked not only if I was divorced, but how many times I had been married. Since the form offered room for only a single digit, I was forced to fudge the facts a bit here.

Now I'm flying solo (yes, again), so I recently filled out a couple forms at social networking sites in a half-hearted attempt to find Miss Right. These sites require information I usually don't share with a woman until after our fifth anniversary. The form-makers think I should spill my guts before the first date.

I didn't. Sometimes a blank space is infinitely preferable to anything one might fill it with. I refuse to be bossed around by an insulting form.

Mike Taylor's new book Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com and in eReader format at Barnes & Noble, Borders, and other online booksellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.