You eat turkey for Thanksgiving, don’t floss when you’re finished and have more TVs in your home than there are people to watch them.
You probably believe in God, and most likely own a Bible, but your chances of being able to name even a single Gospel in the Good Book are 50-50 at best.
You are the average American.
You’re out there somewhere, even if you are just a statistical composite created by a national news magazine.
But Time magazine insists that its upcoming cover story is about more than the mediocrity of being average.
It’s about seeing how you stack up against everybody else.
“When you peel back the numbers and look at the lives underneath, it turns out there’s much to love about average, and much to learn,” Nancy Gibbs writes in an accompanying essay.
Using a treasure trove of factoids about everyday life in America, the Time composite reveals fascinating details about the American lifestyle.
For example, readers learn that while the average American commutes 25 minutes to work, American drivers sit in traffic for an average of 38 hours a year – a waste of 26 gallons of gasoline per person.
Life at work is another eye opener. Priests, firefighters and reservation and ticket agents are the happiest in their jobs, although the data was likely compiled before the Broadway stagehands strike forced frustrated customers to vent their anger at the people who sold them tickets to the theater.
Gas-station attendants are “far and away” the least happy.
The average American exercises for 17 minutes a day. But the 83 percent of Americans who don’t exercise at all are figured into that average.
“Those few who do work out spend a lot of time sweating,” the survey said.
Gym owners don’t mind. Twenty percent of Gold’s Gym’s paying members have not been by to hit the treadmill in the past four months.
And that couch potato thing? It’s not a myth. The average U.S. household has more televisions (2.73) than people (2.6).
After work and sleep, television watching accounts for the largest segment of our day.
In a surprising find, the average American lives 13 years longer than the average celebrity, Bob Hope and George Burns notwithstanding.