Have you ever received one of those lengthy questionnaires in the mail asking how many members of your household smoke cigars, how often you groom your hamster or how many times a week you eat raw meat?

Sure, we all have.

Somewhere on the questionnaire, in not very fine print, is a promise (a lure, really) of free merchandise in exchange for the valued opinion of a pure-blooded American consumer.

I answered the questions.

In detail.

Mailed them off to the great tabulator in the sky.

They mailed me a response. Apparently, I fit into the D-word.

I was a member of a demographic.

Someone who, given the right advertising, stemming from the right research, would gleefully spend all her money and thereby feed the beast.

I was the target audience.

Young, female, graduate student, rents an apartment, owns pets, doesn’t smoke, vegetarian, but sometimes nibbles on fried fish, checked “never” on the “eats raw meat” category.

That’s me.

That’s what someone sees as important.

So I was offered a prized, exclusive membership in the National Consumer Research Association, complete with a secret member card.

“Your first assignment will arrive in a few weeks,” said the enigmatic introduction letter, followed by unrealistic claims from fake members about how the NCRA changed their lives.

Right.

I had no illusions.

Carnival Cruise Lines was not going to decide it needed to know how a vegetarian graduate student with two ferrets reacts to the all-you-can-ingest buffet on a weekend cruise.

Another enticement was that Sony just might send me its latest state-of-the-art stereo system to “try out, and keep, for free!”

None of those fantasies was going to happen.

I idly watched my mailbox for mini tubes of tartar control toothpaste, or maybe a revolutionary cleaning solution guaranteed to erase everything except bad credit.

I was ready to set up my own Good Housekeeping Institute.

But here’s what arrived — another questionnaire (probably because I gave such stellar responses to the first).

And here’s what the all-important question was:

Have you ever seen an angel?

Ponder the relevance.

How many millions are waiting to know the best remedy for tartar build-up, and I’m asked if I’ve ever seen an angel?

My initial reaction was that the question was highly subliminal.

What it really said was, “Have you ever seen (‘Touched By an’) Angel?”

No, I haven’t, and I can’t even mock that show because I really, honestly, have never seen it.

All I can say is it’s one of THOSE shows, those feel good, happy-ending, religion-pays-off shows.

That’s why I’ve never seen it.

Regardless, I checked the “no” box, meaning “no, I haven’t seen any primetime angels. Not lately. None that struck my fancy. Sorry.” But really, the question was too vague.

Have I seen a physical, blood and guts and feathers angel with a halo?

Have I seen a near-death-experience angel, who beckoned me into the warm beyond?

Have I seen the black and white, foreign, obscure-movie angels turned into popular, American-technicolor angels?

“Charlie’s Angels?” The Anaheim Angels? Hell’s Angels? “Angels and Insects?” French-stained glass angels? Beanie Baby angels? The flowers of the Angel Trumpet?

Endless, cement angels watching over graves?

The Aerosmith angel in that classic ’80s video?

The angel in “Barbarella?” Angel cookies with lemon icing and sugar crystal halos?

The angel perched atop the Christmas tree? Angel food cake?

Digress with me into the topic of angel food cake.

Is that what an angel is supposed to taste like, feel like, or is it what the hungry angel eats?

I’ve never understood.

Anyway, I answered the corresponding questions, such as whether or not an angel has personally saved me, or whether or not people become angels after death. No to both.

This is the standard I’m setting for vegetarian female graduate students around the world.

It got me to thinking about angels and all the people who have seen them, been saved by them or played poker with them.

What better place than cyberspace to really get a grasp on the angel vibe.

I went to Yahoo and merrily typed in “angels” — 1,015 hits. No surprise, really.

And on AltaVista? Well, that engine found more angel hits than there are angels in heaven — 949,780.

One interesting, “enhanced angel site” confirmed that “if you jumped to this link, the angels have already touched you.”

Well, if only I’d surfed the Internet BEFORE answering that first question.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t received any free merchandise.

My second assignment, hot on the heels of the revolutionary angel investigation, was to admit my dirty fantasy of preferring either Dan Rather, Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw.

Good lord, I’ve sold my soul.

Jen Hirt is a graduate student in English from Valley City, Ohio.