Should we be sitting around playing sheepshead and the debate turns nasty over who sleeps more, where, for example, I can push over the card table for a shield against flying fish crackers while -- with lightning speed -- producing from somewhere on my person figures which clearly indicate that 75.2 percent of midwesterners do (say the polyurethane mattress people), sleep seven hours a night, compared to only 68.5 percent of westerners (more of whom are likely to have gotten up to go to the bathroom), since 36 percent have more than one, double the number in the nations's heartland (Kohler and Kohler). This chills things out and order is quickly restored.

I originally developed the poll reflex because of my ex-former father-in-law, whose data always seemed to indicate 99.9 percent, whether it was the percentage of marijuana smokers going on to heroin or the fat in the roast his wife was setting before him. Avogadro had his number, and R.B. (not his real initials) had his. Some years back, when the government of Haiti said 99.9 percent of the electorate endorsed the regime of Baby doc, I was sure R.B. had turned up in Port-au-Prince.

Anyway, just to prepare for family get-togethers, I loaded up on polls in areas that were likely to come under contention (these were, after all, the seventies) with every intention of thrusting them under his nose. I never did because I knew it wouldn't work -- he'd just say 99.9 percent of all polls lied -- but a preoccupation was born and lives still.

Polls, after all, can point you in the right direction, particularly exit polls. The numbers can keep you in touch with the culture, although it's hard to look at leotards the same way once you realize that 45 percent of those who wear them never work out in them. (They may simply be people who think their outline is the inline of the universe.)

You begin to dread the previously welcome words "comes with salad bar" once you realize that 60 percent of the population has committed an "act of slobbery" at a salad bar--"eating in line, sneezing beneath the guard, dipping fingers in dressing or picking food up with the fingers, removing and/or replacing food items," or even teasing their hair over the sprouts.

You don't know what to think when you learn that 58 percent of Americans who smoke in bed think it's very risky, but you find reassurance, as well, in the face of critics who believe the American mind is closing, when, in fact, 55 percent of Americans -- well over half -- know the sun is a star, and by a three-to-one margin rate chicken a better value than college tuition.

And how can the work ethic be dead when the Roper people report that only half of the American public feel work interferes with their leisure? Nor can introspection be a lost art when nine out of ten yuppies, according to Lou Harris, find their preoccupation with "self" to be "singularly unattractive."

From facts and findings domestic bliss can be culled as well. A study by a University of Maryland psychologist, for example, confirms that not only do happily married couples today need space, they need about seven hours to cover it, since marriages in which the partners live in different cities are only one-fifth as likely to end in divorce as those that thoughtlessly fling bridge and groom into the same time and space (which, elementary physics should tell us, two bodies were never meant to occupy).

Couples raising children during pit stops ignore the collective wisdom of Walt Disney World at their peril, since the Epcot poll reveals that 84 percent of parents think parents are too lenient, a finding that may be skewed due to the respondents' having just spent thousands to schlep the whole ungrateful lot to a Magic Kingdom where privileges may not be revoked. (Even so, only 9 percent, according to Harris, would have used genetic engineering to make their children more agreeable on long van rides.)

Thirty-four percent of the children, by the way, think kids are treated too leniently, but you can bet 99.9 percent of them mean the little squirts who keep unwinding their Metallica tapes.