Archive for the ‘California Health Insurance’ Category

The throwing of snowballs

Friday, December 11th, 2009

When Stanley heard the sound of one hand clapping, nobody else listened until a California Health Insurance agent decided to play along.

Because of his manipulative personality, his tendency to steal other children’s toys, and his predilection for tattling, other boys avoided eleven-year-old Stanley. When he was outside, he played solitary games like one-hand-clapping, and worse, he’d listen to that hand. Stanley’s mother, a single mom, could be accused of being overprotective, but she had contacted a widowed California Health Insurance agent named Ralph just to make sure her odd little cherub was covered by an individual child plan. This precaution seemed prudent, even prescient, once she started dating Ralph.

Let’s go camping up in the Sierras, Ralph announced one weekend. The three of them headed for a snow-covered campground in a rented SUV. After their tent was pitched, Stanley grew accustomed to the canvas structure’s fetid air and began his characteristic clapping game, which annoyed the heck out of Ralph. “Hey, let’s go out and throw some snowballs!” he announced. Pushed out into a winter wonderland as if re-emerging from the womb, Stanley, who had never really seen snow, began making a snowball with one hand. Ralph noticed. “You have to pack it – use your other hand,” he instructed. All too soon, Stanley had made his first-ever snowball.  But instinctively returning to his familiar game, the one-hand-clapping, the uncoordinated snowball became a projectile and smacked Ralph surprisingly hard on the side of the face.  Before he realized it, and because he assumed Stanley had meant to throw the snowball, Ralph retaliated with his adult strength. He may have thrown several. In any case, Stanley eventually screamed, “He broke my glasses! Ralph broke my glasses!”

Stanley’s mom drove at breakneck speed for forty miles out of that canyon until she made it to the nearest ER, hardly glancing at her newfound boyfriend.

Stanley had been cut below the left eye by a shard of glass, requiring three stitches. Afterwards, Ralph apologized. “I’m sorry kid,” he muttered.

Stanley was quick to forgive. “Want to play my game?” he asked. Ralph was initially repulsed, but decided, “Oh what the heck!” As the SUV sped along a narrow rural road somewhere north of Sacramento, two elusive hands chased each other while never touching.

Alien Abductions: The Ultimate in Outsourced Medical Care?

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Geronimo Jones believed that he’d been abducted by aliens, but his delusions didn’t end there. He went so far as to call a California Health Insurance agent to see if he’d be charged for their “very thorough” probes.


Thirty-four year old Geronimo Jones, hypochondriac and confirmed cheapskate, was lying in bed painfully pondering. He’d been plagued by headaches and this one was a “doozy.” Tylenol hadn’t helped. Geronimo’s split-level ranch in Modesto recently had an alarm installed; he’d gotten a deal. Drifting off to an anguished sleep, Geronimo possibly awakened; he wasn’t sure, instead of a clanging alarm he heard only silence, and was taken, by what appeared to be silver-throated aliens, at least several – one wearing a funny extraterrestrial baker’s hat. Up to the mother ship he possibly went, he wasn’t sure exactly how, it didn’t involve diesel. He lay naked on a metallic table unable to move anything but his pinkies, staring at what appeared to be a photograph of a cat; it probably had fur.

The probing began. One alien seemed to have a medical background, and was evidently very thorough.  It felt very good; whatever he was doing. But a weird voice oozing out of an orifice that might have been the creature’s mouth suddenly blasted Geronimo out of his reverie like a Buck Rogers laser beam.  “Do you have Earthling coverage?”

The next morning, Geronimo Jones for the first time in a year didn’t have a headache but was having a panic attack. “Are those aliens crazy? I didn’t ask to be admitted to their mother ship. Are they going to charge me for treatment?”

Geronimo charged. Impulsively, he put in a frantic call to his California Health Insurance agent. Ring. Ring. Pick up, pick up. “Yes,” said the agent, a woman with a pleasant feline voice, akin to a human purr.   

“This is Mr. Jones.”

“Geronimo from Modesto?”

“Yes. It happened last night.”

“What?”

“I was abducted by aliens.”

“Again?”

“This time they want to charge me for the medical care. Can they do that?”

The cat-like agent was quick on her feet. She pounced. “Yes, if they call me, they actually can. But they’ll have to call me.”

Geronimo felt calm again. Thinking it over, he felt like he’d made out like a bandit. More importantly, he didn’t have a headache.

Cult of the Great Pumpkin

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

California health insurance agents pay homage to Charlie Brown’s comic strip deity.



 The cartoon boy with an “every boy’s” persona would ask the Great Pumpkin arcane questions about life, and in a manner of being, the inanimate orange harvest veggie assumed the stature of an odd deity – or at least a sage in the tradition of certain gods transported from Greek Mythology. As a religion, such a pumpkin cult has its merits, and in these days of strident calls for health care reform, certain California Health Insurance agents have taken to visiting pumpkin patches in search of their own personal Great Pumpkin that may exist in the nether regions between Visalia and Fresno. For days the search for this orange quasi-deity has continued unabated, but although some giant spheroids, many with black features painted on them  like human faces, have been located, none as of yet can be considered sacred, or wiser than others culled from among their brethren. Where this Great Pumpkin resides, proclaimed an excitable agent from the environs around San Bernardino, speaking aloud but in very muted tones, ‘He is liable to be an oracle able to speak in tongues, or to offer wisdom, perhaps possessing a fluency understandable only to those who sell policies for every conceivable need, including but necessarily limited to the occasional health-related whim.’ This agent soon attracted a considerable following with such talk, and the second Cult of the Great Pumpkin was born. Finally as All Hallows Eve approached, a sacrifice was needed, and bands of gathering California Health Insurance agents began roaming the entire state like insurance-minded dervishes. Choosing a suitable Great Pumpkin, even for pie, proved to be a dangerous undertaking once the attention of the real Great Pumpkin was attracted, and soon chunks of familiar  faces began turning up everywhere, during the night and especially once the sun was up. In fact, the most introspective California Health Insurance agents, imitating Charlie Brown in a wondrous reincarnation of animated perpetual boyhood, began sitting Buddha-like in sundry patches all over California. Finally, an unfortunate California Health Insurance agent was indeed mistaken for that very orange veggie he’d been searching for. It was bound to happen.