HUMAN WRECKAGE

Yes, I Didn’t Sign up for That

Spring is a time for renewal. Earlier this week and late in the evening I assumed my usual swivelling perch at the kitchen counter to assess and review the Crooked 9’s latest home insurance policy. I don’t build spreadsheets and my mental math beyond grade school arithmetic is hopelessly flawed. And yet I marvel at how an insurance provider tabulates an ordinary existence.

What is the replacement value of my quasi-bootleg Sex Pistols Anarchy in the U.K.: Live at the 76 club CD? I paid $5; I’ve played it twice. My mother’s father died a few weeks after I was born in 1960. What is the value of his rural Quebec winter scene in oil? He was no Lawren Harris. His work is worthless yet priceless to me because I have a connection of sorts to a man I never knew. Should I lose these things, well, gee, I at least had the opportunity to spend some time with them.

I would hazard that the gambling and insurance industries are similar because they both monetize risk and the house is understandably reluctant to pay out. But unlike a casino, my insurance provider hopes I won’t lose everything. And no premium or modest deductible covers genuine loss: innocence, ideals, ethics, family members departed, friends moved on and grey tabby cats embarked on life number 10. 

The policy’s exclusionary clauses provide a pause for alarm: Nuclear Incident, Terrorism and War. The definitions of these three terms are necessarily broad. For instance, War, aside from being good for absolutely nothing, includes invasion, occupation, revolution, civil war, rebellion and insurrection. Nuclear Incident is a bland euphemism for some pretty harrowing stuff, apocalyptic even. Terrorism reads like a redundant afterthought, i’s dotted and t’s crossed, sort of an End Days catch-all.

As if anything like that could happen on brave, New World soil. Oh, hang on, it has – and more than a few times at that. I jogged the document on the countertop, paperclipped its sheets. I pushed it aside for future filing, another bill to pay, and more horrific potential events to worry about whilst lying awake in the darkest hours.

I slipped outside onto the recessed front porch for a silent cigarette. I heard last fall’s brittle leaves crackling and twigs snapping, rustlings in the night. The Crooked 9’s household policy does not cover structural rodent damage. There are degrees of uninsured problems. And anyway, as far as rodents go, I’d rather share the property with them than work alongside them at an ad agency; talk about war. I went back inside. I shut the door then locked it. I killed the lights.                

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of home economics since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is coming soon. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9, use that thingy on the right.