Every year about this time I begin receiving mail about supplemental insurance programs to purchase. Encyclopedic envelopes carrying fancy printed brochures get stuck in our mail slot and fall back out on our porch where they get rained on. The advertised insurance offers give us enough kindling to warm us by our fireplace the entire winter. I am particularly impressed when insurance companies address me in capital bold letters with the word RESIDENT. When I read that, I want to run outside, like Steve Martin did in The Jerk, and scream to the world that I’m somebody famous.
Inside the envelopes, programs often offer a “window” of opportunity to change my insurance to something that’s better coverage, but I find that opening up that window gives me more health problems than I had before. I start getting headaches when reading about HDHP’s, and HDRA’s. One year I got those terms mixed up with my HDL and considered getting a separate insurance policy just for my cholesterol. When I called my doctor to make an appointment about it, I was told the specialist I needed belonged to an organization called Out-of-Network. As a result, I thought I had something additionally wrong with my TV and thought I’d better call the cable company. After an hour and a half of listening to an instrumental version of Lionel Richie’s “Stuck on You,” I was finally connected to a resource advisor in Ecuador who suggested I watch some old reruns of Andy and Mayberry to calm down.
The part of the window I do like, however, is the big plastic one in the envelope that frames my name, RESIDENT. One time, my grandsons and I pretended it was a picture window for a house we were drawing on the outside of the manilla folder. We began drawing the spiked grass growing in front of our new creative house and added a door and a chimney, but we had the most fun drawing tiny people on a separate piece of paper that we slipped back and taped behind the big plastic picture window.
There, behind the glass, the tiniest people you have ever seen became a family of pirates in the midst of a horrific battle. I didn’t try to explain to the boys that pirates generally don’t hang out in a living room and do battle in front of a picture window for everyone to see. There was a part of me, though, that found poetic justice in pirates invading an envelope formally owned and operated by an insurance company, so I let those kids draw like there was no tomorrow. These pirates had never filed an insurance claim for their long-scarred faces, their peg legs and their bouts of scurvy, and yet, there they were, holding pistols and knives larger than their bodies, screaming orders at each other from speech bubbles that extended out beyond the confines of the plastic window living room, out into the sky around our envelope house. What they were saying to each other is not fit to print here, but I’ll tell you it was some vile pirate talk, filled with threats, and foul insurance language. I made a secret pact with myself to keep my own speech bubbles small and within the privacy of my own living room.
One of the packages I received the other day boldly stated in capital letters: CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 5. Imagine that I thought to myself! I had never reached level five of anything in my life! Somehow, unbeknownst to me, I had passed through four previously unknown levels and not even been aware of it! I can only guess that I had been such a quick learner at the other levels, that I was allowed to skip levels 1-4 and move immediately forward. For a moment my pulse and breathing slowed, and I felt all the muscles in my neck release. It was exhilarating to be excellent at something and not have any idea what that is.
Having been awarded a new level, Level 5, I thought maybe I had missed the banquet they had held in my honor. I imagine there were hundreds of people in attendance, and I was sitting at the head table, waiting for my name to be announced. The pirate in charge, Sir Rosis de Liver stood at the mic:
“Now it is my pleasure to announce to you, this year’s recipient of the International Level Five Award, an award given to a man some say has paid for everything out-of-pocket. While others bragged of guaranteed insurability, our recipient this year has almost single handedly kept our insurance company afloat with his high premiums. Unfortunately, because of a previously unknown condition we could not offer him a seat at the table, but we offer him a most sincere congratulations for attaining Level 5 and wish him the very best as he continues to meet his deductible.”
During the standing ovation, a lone tear fell down my cheek, but someone had to accept that award, and it was me, the RESIDENT.