Insure vs. Ensure

There’s a lot of talk these days about insurance. Homeowner’s insurance, I mean, specifically.

Wildfires rage in San Diego, and commentators on NPR (on NPR!) are speculating that maybe these people just shouldn’t live in an area that tends to burn. Or, if they insist on living there, maybe they should expect to take the heat.

This same talk was happening two years ago, when certain houses in certain places were floating clear away. Except the metaphor that time was whether these people should expect to be bailed out.

But the thing is, most of us? We don’t choose where we reside base on its geo-meteorological conditions. Most of us live in the general area where we were raised. If not, then we probably moved here for a job. Some of us, certainly, retired to where we hoped we wouldn’t have to freeze to death or shovel snow – but we didn’t choose an isolated spot and build a house. Not unless we were rich enough not to have to worry about the repercussions in the first place.

Me, I live where I grew up. Not specifically, but within 50-60 miles of it. And when I bought this house I discovered that I had to pay extra insurance dividends because it’s in a “high wind area.” Granted, those high winds were what blew the tree branch into the house, which punched the hole in the roof, which started the back half of the house rotting away, which made it so that poor, poor pitiful us could afford to buy the AssVac in the first place. But it goes to show: you never know where danger's gonna come from.

You don’t. You don't know. But the insurance companies sure as hell do. They have whole fleets of boring people whose job it is to run the numbers on just this sort of thing. And if they insured you there, then they have to pay.

As I understand what’s going on, they are. Or have. Or will. I don’t mean to imply that any company is shirking on its contracts. It’s the guilt trip about the whole thing that’s got my knickers in a twist. So herewith, a ten-step proposal:

How All Of Us Can Live Happily Without Costing Anybody Anything

1. Wherever you live, it’s a danger. Move.
2. Take nothing with you. Your things are just a burden on us all.
3. When you get there, hunker down. Bad times are coming.
4. And when I say “hunker down,” I mean like this:

5. Of course, you can’t insure that. It’s just dirt.
6. But dirt is where we come from to begin with.
7. And where we all are headed, anyway.
8. So just suck it up and suffer till it’s over.
9. And be glad when you’re dead you bastard, you!

Okay, that was only nine steps. But they were fun, weren’t they?