Conversation about pet insurance

Friend 1: You're playing with fire if you don't have pet insurance.

Me: When my dog Dignan was under my sole care, I carried an alternative version of pet insurance that was totally free.

It was the belief that he could either tough out his expensive injuries or risk being put to sleep.

It's called the "What Our Parents, Grandparents, and All Other Ancestors Did For Doggy Health Care" Plan.

[fast forward a couple months and topic of pet insurance comes up again]




Friend 2: After spending as much time as I have with my girlfriend and her her dog, I remember what dog ownership is like. I take back my statement about thinking Kendall's method of insurance was funny. I want to buy insurance for this dog already.

Me: It's not supposed to be funny.

Dignan has cost me (and now my sister) nothing but food and a couple shots since I got him almost four years ago. I love him dearly but am also aware that dogs are much better adapted to living with discomfort and pain. If something happened to him that made him uncomfortable, I would wait for the problem to clear up on its own. If it got worse, I would probably bite the bullet and take him to the vet. If it was an overly expensive problem to fix, I would have to weigh the costs v. the benefits of getting him fixed.

Basically, I wouldn't spend much money on making the dog merely less uncomfortable, nor would I spend a lot of money on extending the dog's life when a dog doesn't live very long to begin with. It may sound callous, but it seems ridiculous to me to spend a lot of money on a non-human. Call me an asshole, but I'd rather put the dog to sleep, be really, really sad for a few days and then just get a new dog, which is actually a really fun thing to do, than be milked monthly by an insurance company or dump money down the never-ending hole known as a dog with health problems.

Friend 3: You have no soul.

Friend 4: You have no soul for real.

Me: If I had no soul, I wouldn't be sad about doing it. Knowing when it's time to let go of your dog doesn't mean you loved it any less. To me, pet insurance is another example of the wussification of America, or perhaps more accurately an example of America's crippling fear of death.

I guess I'm just more comfortable with death and with a dog's place in the food chain. People these days seem to think that dogs are actual family members or something and that if they spend enough money on their dogs, they'll live forever. No matter how much money you spend on your dog, he or she will not live longer than 10 or maybe 15 years. If it makes you feel better to spend thousands on insurance and deductibles over the years to cover reconstructive surgery and physical therapy and whatever else, go for it. But don't attack me because I'm comfortable with getting a couple extra opportunities over the course of my lifetime to pick out new puppies that will not spend their lives in traction, casts, and those dumb neck cones.

Friend 4: I get what your saying, Kendall, but regardless, I'm willing to spend 20 bucks a month to potentially save me from one of those decisions.

Me: Even if you completely reject my argument that we have gone too far in humanizing our pets, why pay an insurance company who will charge you a deductible and potentially 10 to 20 percent of the costs and most likely do everything in their power to reject your claim? I would probably go ballistic the first time I heard the words "policy limit" or "pre-existing condition" at the vet's office. Why not put $20 per month in an interest-bearing account and then use that to pay for the dog's vet bills if and when they come up?

*****

Check out this article on how pet names are becoming more human.

You're not allergic, just picky.

30% of people think they have food allergies. Only 8 percent actually do.

Full body scanners at KCI

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2010/mar/05/kansas-city-international-airport-test-full-body-s/

My parents just informed me that full body scanners are now in use at the Kansas City airport. I predictably blew a gasket while they basically implied it was just another small price to pay to fly safer.

I really think they are over-the-top and a pretty sever invasion of privacy. The idea that some TSA fuckwad can look at my girlfriend or mother or sister naked is disturbing, to say the least. I would rather take my chances with metal detectors and than have to think about some random asshole from Raytown making regular deposits into his Spank Bank in the name of national security.




I really think we're not too far off from having to strip down completely naked behind a curtain, check our clothes and those pesky navigation disrupters (cell phones and iPods) with security and put on a TSA-issued robe for the flight. Then again, we'd only be one karate expert terrorist attacking a flight attendant away from having our hands and feet restrained throughout the flight.

I can't wait for the not-too-distant future where I'm paying $1,000 to sit naked and tied up in a cramped space for three hours, and no, I'm not talking about my plans to hang out with Charlie Sheen and Hugh Grant this Saturday night.

At this point, I don't think too many people would even object to the robe scenario. Anything for safety, right?

Having children

So I was recently around one of Rachel's co-workers who was talking about how she was debating whether to sign her daughter up for a soccer league. Her daughter was already involved in ballet and swimming and some other activity, so she was concerned that it might be too much.*

As you can imagine, this conversation wasn't really my cup of tea. Of course my input wasn't requested but anyone who knows me knows that won't stop me from butting into a conversation I know nothing about. The only thing I could think of was to ask whether kids just ride around their bikes after school any more.

"Oh no," she almost whispered. "You just can't do that anymore."

"Of course," I said, not picking up on the non-joke, "just think of what could happen."

Completely, dead-seriously she said, "I mean, these days you have to worry about getting abducted."

I quickly changed the topic, or allowed the topic to change, I don't remember which, because I knew I was about five seconds away from either having or inducing a nuclear meltdown**.

First of all, I grew up in the Golden Age of Serial Killers. Gasey, Dahmer, and Bundy all had their heydays in the late 1980s and early 1990s. All of those boxy white vans made for abducting people came out around the same time . It seemed like every single day there was a news story about a child murder.

Yet my friends and I were out every afternoon totally unsupervised. I had to tell my mom where I was, but that consisted of telling her I was going to play soccer or football or just out riding my bike and playing in the creek. There was no adults around and nobody seemed to care.

We were told over and over to not talk to or accept rides from strangers. Somehow it worked. Not one of my friends, or friends of friends or friend of friends of friends was ever abducted. Now I'm sure a few of them were molested, but that was probably by a family member or priest or otherwise trusted adult.

The point is that children get abducted or molested regardless of whether we want them to or how much we shelter them. Even children who are kept in their homes can be stolen directly from the home. Remember Polly Klaas?

Did Polly Klaas get abducted because she wasn't sheltered enough or because she rode her bike after school? No. Polly Klaas was murdered because bad shit happens and you can't do much about it more than you can prevent a car accident.

You can teach your children to avoid strangers and be smart, just as you can teach them to look both ways before they cross the street. But if we're teaching them to be so scared of the world that they can't leave their own backyards, then we shouldn't be surprised when they turn out to be helpless, corpulent, and otherwise as useful as tits on a bull.

What a depressing worldview to have when you won't even let your children go outside. I wouldn't even bring a child into this world if I thought letting him outside would just lead to child murder. Now if there's an active serial killer operating in your town, it might be a good idea to keep little Timmy locked up until they find the guy or the abductions slow down. But to just assume there's one in every neighborhood is pretty twisted.

To paraphrase the great Gus McCrae, Life is short. Shorter for some than others. But it's not how you die that's important. It's how you live.


*Great conversation by the way. Meanwhile, I was talking to her gay co-worker about going to concerts and eating good food. If that's not an argument for waiting to have kids or to have none at all, I don't know what is.

**Just remembered this isn't entirely true. I pointed out this recent incest/murder case and suggested that maybe if kids were out riding their bicycles more, they would at least be safe from getting molested by their fathers.