From where does your help come?

Sitting in Birmingham in the days after the tornado watching the excellent non-stop coverage of the disaster, I caught a live interview with two Congressmen from Alabama - one Democrat, one Republic - that spoke volumes.
The Democrat was Terri Sowell; the Republican Spencer Bachus. they were not on at the same time, and so didn't hear each other. And the question was something along the lines of, "What do we do now?
Sowell, who is very bright and well spoken and no doubt represents her constituents the way they want, immediately began talking about the Federal government's response, from expecting a Presidential response to calling for officials from FEMA to set up immediately to the benefit of an expected declaration of disaster.
Bachus, a long-time Representative, had a different take. His first reaction was to talk about having the Red Cross and local churches and volunteer groups hitting the ground to start bringing immediate aid.
And that, to me, has become the primary difference between the two parties.
For all the trouble that this country is in on so many fronts - the economy, jobs, housing, natural disasters - it is important to realize that this is nothing this country has not been through before - and we've always come through.
However, the concern is that every time we've come through some issue - the Cold War, the Great Depression, gas shortages, civil rights, World Wars, mud slides, earthquakes - we always come through with a little less freedom than we had before. Inevitably, the programs that begin with the best of intentions, designed to help people, become, before long, entitlements. And as much as politicians want people to like (meaning "vote for") them by helping them, what they end up with are people who expect and eventually demand more help until the system becomes overloaded and, eventually, unsustainable. (see my last blog: http://raymelick.blogspot.com/2011/05/history-no-guarantees-but-certainly.html).
On the other hand, I have witnessed, first hand, people showing up to help people.Strangers who deliver sandwiches and water and offer to haul debris for a few minutes with no expectation of anything in return.
In my own neighborhood in Birmingham, I watched as neighbors whose houses had been destroyed simply went next door to help a neighbor whose house was salvageable. Many of us would work on our own places for awhile, then we'd go down the street and pitch in to help on a project that appeared doable.
No one from the government came by and told us to do this. No agency came by and made us do it. We just did it.
The same is true in more organized efforts. I went down to the Christian Service Mission (see facebook page; https://www.facebook.com/ChristianServiceMission) in Birmingham, where an 8,000 foot warehouse has been filled and emptied 30-plus times in the first two weeks after the disaster hit. On the day I went down, there were several men from Indiana who had driven down and were cooking in the parking lot. There were people who drove in from Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Florida - all over; good people who just decided to leave what they were doing to show up and help out. Often they didn't even have any idea of where to go or what they'd do, but they knew they needed to do something.
Regular people were showing up with their personal trucks and trailers to deliver, with no expectation of reimbursement for gas despite gas prices being what they are. 

As one AP story said, "Thousands of volunteers headed to the University of Alabama with chainsaws, wrecking bars and food to tornado victims. ... So many people came to volunteer Saturday that it caused traffic jams, reminiscent of a fall football weekend. Many groups have had time since the storms struck April 27 to organize trips, and the turnout appeared far heavier than the first weekend after the twisters. ..."

Everything is not positive, of course. There are abuses, from looting in some areas to a (very) few companies that cut trees for a living protesting all these "volunteers" because these volunteers are taking away from their livelihood. There are instances where "donations'' have been broken toys or dirty clothes or other unusable items that look more like people were getting rid of their trash than actually donating to really help people in need.
Those incidences have been rare, although we can expect them to pick up as the sense of urgency wears off and the reality of the long haul that people are in for in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia settles in.
Oh, and FEMA and the government has been very active, and doing good work. It would be remiss not to give them credit.
But is government working because the lessons of Katrina were learned, or because the government has stumbled into a situation where people are not relying exclusively on the government but using government to supplement their own hard work and the hard work of neighbors and volunteers?
I don't know the answer to that. Maybe it's a lot of both.
Here where I work on the Gulf of Mississippi, people remember the help they received during Katrina, and are determined to go north to return the favor.
That seems to me to be the way it is supposed to be.
And it is an indictment of the church and communities that we let the government step in and take over delivering the kind of help that the church and local communities used to recognize as their responsibility - even as we see the church and local community respond in huge numbers, proving that sympathy is no substitute for action.

In short, where does your help come from?

Swirling outside the vortex of memory

You know how you go along, minding your own business, nothing in particular on your mind, when suddenly something inconsequential triggers a memory chain?
It usually happens in areas where you have memories. Say you're riding around the perimeter of Atlanta, and go by the exit for Greenbriar Mall. The thought of Greenbriar Mall makes you think of riding your bike there when you were a kid, going to the Woolworth's to look at comics - Tarzan was my favorite, which got me starting reading Edgar Rice Burroughs. My Dad collected all the works of Louis L'Amour, and I collected the Travis McGee novels of John D. McDonald. McGee supposedly lived on a house boat (the "Busted Flush") in a boat slip in Fort Lauderdale's Bahia Mar Marina, a real place I drove by once with my brother when my brother lived in South Florida. We were headed out deep sea fishing - the last time I ever went deep sea fishing because I got so sick I remember hanging over the side of the boat, losing my lunch. And I was not the only one ...
You see how it goes.
Somewhere I remember someone referring to this as a "memory vortex'' or "the vortex effect."
Because I have been fortunate enough to travel a good bit for most of my life around the United States, these "vortex'' moments happen all over the place. I see something about Pittsburgh, which reminds me of the time I flew into Pittsburgh on my way to State College and all 50 of the "Miss America'' contestants where there, gathered at one gate. Turns out for some reason they all flew into Pittsburgh before going on to Atlantic City, where they would show up en masse for the Miss America pageant. I don't know why the pageant organizers had them meet in Pittsburgh, and if it was always Pittsburgh or if sometimes they met in Cleveland and sometimes Richmond or wherever.
That was the trip where I flew into State College for a Penn State football game, and the night before a couple of us wandered around what, at least at the time, seemed like one of the coolest college towns ever. We went into some legendary bar called the Rathskeller where the guys I was with drank Rolling Rock and apparently it was OK to take out pocket knives and carve names or messages into the tables. Later we wandered into this upstairs club that was absolutely packed, and when they started playing Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" everyone started dancing and singing along; it was one of those inexplicable experiences that took a song I'd never cared for and turned it into this memory that always makes me smile.
Or how any time I'm in an unfamiliar town, turn a corner and see a McDonald's, I always think of my sister seeing a McDonald's on a trip to California and saying, "Oh, good! A home-cooked meal!''
It was a trip my family took out west for my oldest brother's wedding. We drove from Atlanta to Los Angeles to San Francisco and back through Denver and Kansas City, pulling the camping trailer my Dad built and going camp-ground-to camp ground. We stopped in Arizona to see the Grand Canyon, taking a small plane ride into the canyon that was so rough Mom was throwing up in the front seat. ... I ride in the back of the stationwagon, lying down, either looking at the mountains or reading Westerns that I'd get from drug stores along the way. ... My first piece of real beef jerky, which until that time I'd only read about in books. My brother and I bought it at some road-side stand high in the mountains of Nevada, back before you could buy beef jerky at every convenience store and truck stop in America.
You get the idea.
But here is the point - and I think I have one: the other day as I was trying to figure out why, even though I've lived here since November, the Gulf Coast of Mississippi just doesn't feel like home. And it occured to me: no memory vortex.
There is nothing here that creates those associations in my mind. It's the strangest thing. I love the scenic drive along the Mississippi Sound every day; the waves and beach and sunsets. I love the remaining old homes, the handful of restaurants that I'm now familiar with. I really like the people I work with and the work I'm doing.
But I still feel out of place. Even though the memory vortex often kicks in while in places I've never been, it just doesn't seem to happen here.
It's very strange. But even the memories that I've created around this place - ridiculously long walks with The Trophy Wife over bridges where we stumble onto a parade or see one woman's shoe that has us nervously looking over the side for a body, certain that where there is one shoe there should be another - I have to almost force myself to come up with those memories. They don't just happen. The 'vortex' doesn't just take over and start my mind spiraling to other places, other people, other times.
I'm not sure what this means. Or if it means anything. I just know I can't seem to create any real associations with this place, despite having some some wonderful things, been some wonderful places, and met some wonderful people...
Maybe it just takes time.

Aftermath of the death of Bin Laden: some of us will sleep easier while some may not

I was making my now-customary late-night drive down I-10 heading back from Birmingham to the paradise that is the Mississippi Gulf Coast when I heard the guy on the radio say that Osama Bin Laden was dead.
Shortly after that, I got a text on my phone that said, "Obama is dead!" from someone who would be embarassed to be identified but who could be forgiven for juxtaposing names in a moment of what I suppose was celebration or wonder.
In fact, just a few minutes later, the same radio commentator of a late-Sunday-night talk show who broke the news to me about Osama's death was trying to fill in details when he blurted out, "Obama was shot in the head! ... I mean, Osama was shot in the head,'' and over the next few minutes apologized profusely for the error.
An honest mistake; one that I don't believe for a minute was malicious. The names are too similar, and neither are common to the American tongue.
I don't believe it is the right of America to take out the leader of another country unless we're actively at war with that country. I believe in self-determination, and that belief has to carry over to other people in other countries as well. If they don't like their government, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new forms of government - a phrase I read somewhere.
But I honestly believe the death of Bin Laden was justified as an act of war. While he was not the leader of any identifiable country, he was the head of an organization that had repeatedly claimed to be at war with America. He accepted and boasted in responsibility for so many of the most horrific terrorist attacks of the last 20 years - both before and after the events of September 11, although the events of September 11 alone seem to me enough to warrant this kind of action against him.
The death of Bin Laden means that people who want peace can sleep a little better, knowing one threat is removed.
At the same time, the people who plot evil against peace-loving people of the world have to be sleeping a little less easy, wondering if they could be next.
While I am not necessarily opposed to the death penalty, I have always had this uneasy feeling that death was too easy of a way out for the truly evil. Selfishly, I would prefer the people who do us wrong are left alive and somehow made to live with the knowledge that they did not get away with their evil.
On the other hand, I do believe in eternity. And I do believe that Bin Laden knows right now what he's guilty of having done, fully understands the depths of his cruelty, and is feeling every bit of the pain of those people he or his minions hurt in his life.
It reminds me of a joke that seems to fit right now. Bin Laden dies and is taken to a room where he stands with the angel Gabriel, who according to Islam took the prophet Muhammed on his vision of paradise. Expecting his reward for being a devote Muslim, instead the door opens and George Washington comes into the room and hits him across his face. Bin Laden stands up, and Thomas Jefferson walks in and slams Bin Laden with the back of his hand. Bin Laden staggers to his feet again, and Robert E. Lee walks in and gives him a direct shot to the nose.
"What is this?'' Bin Laden cries. "Where are the 72 virgins promised to me by the Qu'ran?"
"Virgins?'' Gabriel said. "Oh, no - you misunderstood. It's 72 Virginians!"
Ba-dum-dum.
The point is that as much as I might feel like Bin Laden escaped my standard of justice, as much as we might like to determine fitting punishment for enemies such as Bin Laden, in the end Bin Laden did not - and will not - escape his trial before God.
And he will know for all time a level of pain and suffering far beyond any he inflicted in his miserable life.

Good in bed, that's what I said

So on one of the last weekends I was home, the boys and I went out for lunch at a nearby barbecue place, and then my youngest, the Dawg, said he wanted to get a haircut so we drove down to this place we go because you can almost always walk right in and get your hair cut. You may never get it cut by the same person twice in a row, which means every haircut is kind of like a roll of the dice, but it was convenient and the people are nice and, like I said, there is very rarely ever any wait.
So we go in and, sure enough, the Dawg can get right in a chair. They ask if I'd like to get a hair cut, but The Heir looks at me and says, "Dad, you don't need a haircut. You look great."
Now, vanity says maybe I really was having a good hair day and I did look good. But it was more likely that The Heir didn't want to go to the hair cutting place in the first place and certainly didn't want to sit there through two hair cuts.
Knowing that, I said no, and The Heir and I sat down to wait.
"You want to read a magazine?" I asked.
"No,'' said The Heir, looking at the racks of magazines like Glamour and Redbook and Cosmopolitan, every woman's magazine you could think of.
"I don't think I need to know 'Five Tips to Get a Guy' or "How to Tell if He's Really Into You" or ..."
He stopped just short of the next one, an article on "Are You Good in Bed?"
There was an awkward silence.
But I couldn't resist.
"You know, I'm good in bed,'' I said.
The Heir got that look of terror on his face, the one he always gets when he thinks we're getting ready to have a conversation he wants no part of.
"I don't need to hear this, Dad,'' he said.
"But I am," I asid. "You're mother says so."
He was looking off in the distance, thinking maybe I did need a haircut - and right now - after all.
"I'm sure,'' he said, terror growing. "I really don't think - "
"I have this one position that's my best," I said, smiling innocently. "Ask your mother."
"Daa-ad ..." he pleaded.
"Yeah," I said. "I curl up on my side, and I'm out like a light. I mean, I can go to sleep in no time. You're mother has always been amazed at my ability to go to sleep. She says I can sleep anywhere, anytime, through anything.
"I never have trouble sleeping. When I hit the bed, I'm out. Even if I do wake up in the middle of the night, I can go right back to sleep. I tell your mother it's because I have a clear conscious. But the simple truth is, I'm just really, really good in bed."
The Heir still couldn't look at me.
"That's what it means, right?" I asked. "Being good in bed?'
Oh, the joys of being a Dad.

Believe it ... or not

In the fall, during the course of this second career that I've stumbled into, I often had the pleasure of being involved in conversations with different levels of government and community officials trying to determine "how clean is clean."
One particular government official was a particular challenge, and it was important to reach some mutually acceptable standard of "clean.'' But as the discussions went on, he kept saying he was not going to believe the company that I worked for; then a little later he'd say he wasn't going to believe the United States government; even later he'd say he wasn't going to believe scientests; and evenually he'd insist he wasn't going to believe university researchers.
No matter who we suggested could be the arbiter of "clean," this particular official kept finding a reason to doubt the integrity of that person or institution.
Finally, at the end of yet another round of meetings, I couldn't help myself.
"So who will you believe?'' I asked. "The truth is, it's the nature of our culture to not believe. No matter who we put up as a possible authority, we can all find reasons to doubt them.
"At some point, you're going to have to decide who you believe and commit. When you decide who that is, come back and tell us, and then we can go forward."
Believing in anything is difficult these days. We've all been so disappointed - in products we buy, in the government we elect, in the preachers we listen to, in teachers we learn from, in parents, in friends, in spouses, even in our pets and perhaps even ourselves.
In fact, it's almost embarassing to admit to 'believing' in anything. Certainly it's not "cool."
Doubting is safe. We wear skepticism like a badge of honor.
I thought of this recently when I read a quote from C.H. Spurgeon: "Faith encourages every virtue; unbelief murders every one."
Think about that. I could go on for a few paragraphs breaking that apart for you, but I couldn't improve on what Spurgeon said.
When I was a kid, growing up in my traditional Southern Baptist church (http://raymelick.blogspot.com/2011/03/chapter-1-conflict-of-growing-up.html) I was terrified of commiting what we called "The Unpardonable Sin."
It was that sin that we were told God would never forgive us for, and in my King James Bible that sin was referred to as "blaspheming the Holy Spirit."
In my amazingly impressionable little boy mind, I lived in terror of committing "The Unpardonable Sin." In my little world "blaspheming" meant "taking the Lord's name in vain,'' which again, in my sheltered little world meant "cussing."
Now, I didn't cuss. But it's like the old trick of telling someone they can think of anything they want, but they can't think about elephants. Inevitably, they think of elephants. It's almost impossible not to.
So the more I'd think, "Don't use God's name as a cussword'' inevitably the "word" - or that certain combination of two words, one of which was indeed "God" - would pop into my mind.
And I'd be terrified that I'd just committed "the Unpardonable Sin" and was doomed for all time.
Silly, I know. And a psychiatrist/psychologist/counselor can probably have a field day with that story.
Later, of course, I finally learned what the "Unpardonable Sin'' really is: unbelief.
Unbelief is the only sin for which people are truly, permanantly condemned. I believe in God as presented in the Jewish-Christian Bible with roots in the Reformation, which means I believe that salvation comes by faith alone, which means you have to believe.
Think about it - unbelief is the originator of all sin because it is the ultimate rejection of God, who is completely and utterly trustworthy.
So the "unpardonable sin'' is not believing in God. If you don't believe in God, if you choose to go your own way, God will let you suffer the consequences for that unbelief. I think it was one of C.S. Lewis's most profound statements that went something like, "In the end, either we say to God 'Thy will be done' or God will say to us 'Thy will be done.'''
And one thing I do know is that I don't have the power to save myself. My will, in fact, tends to lead me into trouble.
It's not just God, however.
We want to elect leaders who believe in something and stand by that belief. Unfortunately, too many of our elected leaders seem to believe only in doing what it takes to stay elected. 
Go back to my government official. He was elected because somebody - or a lot of 'somebodies' - believed in him.
But he let that paralyze him into indecision, because he was terrified of believing in the wrong thing, causing all those people to stop beliving in him. Therefore it was easier to just not believe in anything, because that seemed safer..
Spurgeon went on to say, "Once a giant stops believing, he then becomes a dwarf."
We have a lot of dwarfs in this world.
It takes a brave man to stand up in the face of so many skeptics and be willing to say, "I believe.''
Oh, sometimes I don't always live like I believe. Sometimes my belief waivers.
But I do believe.
Because life is just so stupid when you don't.

The shot that marked the beginning of the end of "states rights.''

As I write this, it is April 12 - the 150th anniversary of what is generally considered to be the start of the Civil War.
Or, as it was known in my house, the "War of Northern Agression."
There has been and will continue to be a lot of discussion about what is commonly called The Civil War (although there was nothing 'civil' about it). CNN ran a poll that said "Four in 10 Southerners still side with the Confederacy."
In fact, the poll said 38 percent of Southerners remained sympathetic to the Confederacy, which to me is a completely different thing than 'siding.'
And the results of the poll were not quite as shocking as that headline suggests. In fact, it went pretty much the way you'd figure - unless you think all Tea Party members are right wing wackos one generation removed from wearing a white sheet and hood.
But here is why I think so many people do indeed "sympathize'' with the South: it was the last stand of States' Rights.
Let's try to keep emotion out of this discussion if we can. I'm not advocating the issue that caused South Carolina and 10 other Southern states to succeed from the Union. Clearly, slavery was and is wrong.
And let's not get all misty-eyed about Abraham Lincoln. At his first inauguration, he said he had no intention of freeing the slaves in the South, only of making all new states that joined the union 'free' states. He believed the tide was turning against slavery, and that it was inevitable that right-thinking people in the South would, before long, recognize the evil of slavery and do away with it.
And if you think about the history of the Civil Rights movement and how long it has taken to get where we are, a case could be made that it might have been better had the South come to the realization on its own rather than have the issue forced. It's kind of like any change of behavior: it is always more successful when voluntary than when externally forced on you.
Slavery might have ended legally. But look at the history of Blacks in America - all over, not just in the South - and I can show you how a legal end to slavery did not bring about a practical end to the sub-standard treatment of a race of human beings.
But let's get away from emotion for a minute and remember history.
When the nation was formed, the debate was over whether we were a voluntary union of independant states; or if we were actually the United States of America.
If the union was voluntary, then disolving the union should be voluntary as well. If we were one unified country, then Andrew Jackson was right.
I bring Jackson in because as president during the early 1830s, he threatened to bring troops to South Carolina to stop that state from seceeding over the "Tariff of Abominations.'' Jackson, despite being a Southerner, believed the Union could not be broken.
The "tariff of Abominations'' was, simply put, a tax voted in by Congress over Southern objections that basically forced Southern planters to trade with Northern industries rather than make more money by trading with industries in England and France, which were paying a higher price for Southern goods than Northern industry could afford.
The tariff, in a sense, killed free enterprise by forcing Southern planters to profit less no matter which way they wanted to sell, and built up Northern factories by giving them access to the raw materials they needed from Southern planters without having to pay fair world-market prices.
That led to talk of seccession, and it wasn't the first time a state had threatened to seceed.
During the War of 1812, northeastern states whose shipping industry was hurting because of the war decided at the Hartford Convention to seceed from the Union if the president, James Madison, didn't imediately stop the war. Unfortuantely for them, the U.S. won the war before they could make their demand, and so began the end of Federalist Party in the United States.
So there was already ground work for states believing they had voluntarily joined the union, so they should be able to voluntary leave at their pleasure.
And there was already a backdrop in which Southern states had seen the United States government make laws over their objections. In fact, one of the great problems that preceeded the break was that Lincoln never bothered to campaign in the South, so sure was he that he could win the election without needing a single Southern state.
As a result, Southern voters weren't given a chance to hear Lincoln say he wasn't going to free the slaves by force.
But Lincoln's election, to Southerners, was one more sign that the United States government was going to govern without their cooperation or input. And so before Lincoln was inaugurated, Southern representatives to the United States Congress walked out - thereby losing their voice in the great debate that should have taken place in that ruling body and eliminating any chance of a compromise that might have preserved the Union.
So whatever you think about secession and the South, the bottom line was that Southern states believed they knew best how to govern themselves.
The North said no, the federal government knew best how to govern the entire country.
And that's a debate that continues on today, doesn't it?
Slavery was and is an abomination.
But this war was about so much more.
And while you're at it, remember all those Southern States that were ruled under martial law for up to five years after the Civil War; all those white Southerners who lost the right to vote during those years of martial law; and the brutal way the Federal government and Northern industrialists continued to abuse the South for decades, claiming the "spoils of victory.''
California Gov. Jerry Brown said recently that this country was the most divided it had been since the Civil War.
If he's right, the division is over the same thing it was way back then.
Not slavery, but how far government should be allowed to be involved in our every day lives.
That's just my opinion.
 And, as Dennis Miller says, and I could be wrong.

Like a good neighbor .... if by "neighbor'' you mean "genie'' or even "neighborhood pimp"

We all know you can't take any commercial too seriously. Commercials are kind of like jokes - if you try to analyze them, they lose any value they may have ever had.
Still, it's getting to the point with some commercials that you watch and find yourself wondering if for the sake of entertainment they've forgotten what they are trying to sell; or if they even realize what they are suggesting by their "storyline."
Like the current State Farm commercials, where the company would have you believe that singing the jingle "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there" has magical properties, like rubbing a genie's lamp or seeing the first star of the night.
You've seen the commercial. There's an accident - a ball goes through a window, a car backs into another car - and everyone is upset until the insured sings, "Like a good neighbor ..." and suddenly the insurance agent appears and says, "I'll take care of this."
That, in itself, is terrific. If only insurance agents really did show up that fast and with such confidence.
However, it's what happens next in these commercials that leaves you wondering.
The uninsured in the commercial then begin to sing the jingle, finishing with a wish: a sandwich, a hot tub, a new girlfriend or boyfriend.
At worst, it means the insurance agent is a pimp, there to meet the carnal desires of you heart. Don't like the way your significant other looks? Insurance can handle that.
How?
That raises all kinds of interesting scenarios, doesn't it?
Is the suggestion that the insurance agent can fix you up with the person of your dreams? People have been killed over insurance policies before, of course.
Or take the sandwich-hot tub scenario. What is the suggestion here - that the settlement you'll get will be more than enough to not only fix the problem, but leave you with enough cash to get something else, too?
Now if we're honest, we know tha actually does happen. Take the lessons of the disappearing Delta 88.
Years ago, I had an Oldsmobile Delta 88. I actually liked the car a lot. It was the biggest car I'd ever owned, a big four-door sedan, that was extremely comfortable given the amount of driving I do/did. And before getting the Delta 88, I had a two-seater convertable MGB; and before that, a Ford Mustang.
But in the space of about a year, the Delta 88 was stolen three times. All three times it was stolen from in front of our house. Two of the three times it was recovered at the same house a few miles from where we lived at the time; the third time it was about a mile beyond that house.
The police told me GM cars were the easiest to steal; you could do it with a hammer and a kitchen knife. The car had been stolen during a rain storm, and the guess was that some kid was walking along and decided to take the car. Because it was a kid, the police said it was pointless to make an arrest, as the kid would be out in no time. The case, to them, wasn't worth pursuing even though, as I said, the car was found at the same house two of the three times it was recovered.
There are a bunch of good stories about these episodes; stories for another day.
The point here is that each time the car was stolen, my insurance company - let's make it nameless - rewarded me with a check far greater than it actually took to fix the car.
But after the third time, this enormous insurance company dropped me without warning. Not only couldn't I get car insurance, I couldn't get homeowners insurance. It was only because of a great insurance agent from another company who convinced his company to insure me with my promise that the only way I'd make a claim for the next three to five years was if my house burned down. And I didn't. I learned my lesson - I only make insurance claims in true emergency situations.
But these commercials seem to indicate that State Farm is saying when you make a claim with them, you might just wind up hitting the lottery: getting more money than you really need, allowing you to get a sandwich, a hot tub, mnaybe even a new partner.
Is that really good business, to have an insurance company seem to promise more than just fixing the problem but also improving your life?
In all my dealings with insurance companies, I never did get a new significant other.
But then, I never had reason to ask, either.