It had seemed like a lark. The four dorm buddies had just learned on the Internet that TODAY, August 7^th – was National Sea Serpent Day. “That’s crazy,” said Jim Brewer, an astute but fun-loving 22-year-old, “Who ever heard of a sea serpent in southern California waters?” Sitting with Jim in his room were Mike, Dave, and Bill, surnamed Smith, Doe, and Jones respectively, all majors in marine sciences, and all had a good laugh. Something else they all had in common were health insurance policies provided by a California Health Insurance agent – which was to prove fortuitous.

One of the college students decided on an excursion as a way to celebrate the peculiar holiday – intended partly in jest but also because going out in Jim’s Aquasport was fun. A few hours later, Jim Brewer and his buddies were placidly perched in the 20-foot Aquasport when something, a sleek & sinuous serpentine shape, suddenly loomed over their boat in the fog, rising from the depths, and swiftly rammed them before any of them could blink.

“What the heck was that?” Dave Doe managed to say while bobbing in the ocean a mile off Catalina Island, as the Aquasport was capsized. Jim replied in emergency mode, “Everybody is okay, except for Mike, he’s swallowed a lot of water.”

Luckily Dave and Bill managed to right the boat, and they all headed back toward the city. Enroute, Jim put in a call via cell (amazingly it still functioned) to Mr. Tim Neptune, the kindly California Health Insurance agent who knew all their parents, and regarded these young men too as his clients.

“What can I do for you?”

“Our boat got swamped,” Jim blurted.

“What capsized you?”

“We don’t know. We think it was a sea serpent. But Mike Smith swallowed a lot of water and he’s barely conscious. What should we do?”

“Take him to the nearest ER,” advised Neptune, sounding like a sea god at that moment, “Don’t worry. You all have coverage and it’s current.”

Once their buddy Mike was taken in, he required hospitalization and an overnight stay. When he woke up in his hospital bed, Mike’s first words were peculiar. “It was a sea serpent,” he said, “I saw it.”

Richie Montrose was an all American boy. The previous summer he’d been 12 and broken his foot while skateboarding down a steep hill. Mending the hairline fracture had been out of pocket, no insurance. This summer, his parents were better prepared, and went to see a California Health Insurance agent with Richie in tow.

“We’re covered,” his dad triumphantly said afterwards, “What would you like to do this summer?”

To Richie, that was a no brainer. “August 16 is National Roller Coaster Day,” the boy said, a bit wistfully, “Why don’t we all go to Six Flags Magic Mountain?”

His Dad considered it, his mom was right there, and it was the family’s vacation week. The theme park was nearby in Valencia, only about twenty miles north of West Hollywood where the family lived. “There are neat roller coasters at Magic Mountain,” his mom offered, “and we can go there, on one condition: All three of us have to go on whatever ride you choose.”

Richie considered the embarrassment factor, he was actually a teenager, and whirred through his mind’s eye the park’s 100+ thrilling rides, including roller coasters like Tatsu, Goliath, the Riddler’s Revenge, and  his all-time favorite, the revamped X2. Somehow he had to convince both of his parents to ride that. But he would do it. “It’s a deal,” Richie agreed.

That family fun day began within minutes of the park’s opening. By late afternoon, they’d ridden as a family five of Magic Mountain’s six looping coasters – but not the X2. Worse, with dusk approaching, both parents were balking. “Pretty please …” the boy finally said, with strategic tears starting in both eyes. His parents weren’t dummies when it came to coasters. They knew about the X2’s raven turns, its terrifying flips, how the individual coasters spin independently 360 degrees forwards and backwards on a separate axis. “No way,” Richie’s dad drew the line, or thought he did.

But a few moments later they were all strapped in and set for an unrelenting thrill, and after the ride, when Richie’s dad felt pain in his ribs, lots of it, Richie was philosophical on their way to the ER. “At least we’re covered dad,” he said, and his mom laughed, while his dad only tried to.

The Donegans, Bob, Mitzy, and their kids, Joey, Johnny, and Jimmy loved to light fireworks on their land near Eureka. They’d get it from Tijuana, and drive up past San Francisco with enough firepower every 4^th of July to start their own preemptive war. Their family health insurance plan typically served for mundane family catastrophes that might occur at other times of the year. Except for this single idiosyncrasy, a well-intentioned rite for celebrating our nation’s birthday, the Donegans were pretty ordinary. Bob was a self-employed entrepreneur with a computer repair business. Mitzy did the company’s books, and the kids, already quite computer literate, did the troubleshooting if the trouble wasn’t too complicated.

Around June 29^th the family drove off merrily humming. Their black hummer headed south for the border towards Tijuana’s fireworks stands, some with supermarket-like inventories,  to stock up on Roman candles and bottle rockets, salutes and M-80s, blockbusters and cherry bombs, even sparklers and snakes for little Jimmy, who was only twelve and a bit more timid than his brothers and parents.

Once back home, preparation for festive explosions and “the lighting” always was a big production. Neighbors came from miles around. Bob and Mitzy were relatively safety-conscious, but their boys could be downright careless – especially Johnny, a sullen 14-year-old who loved to see just about anything “blow up.” He was about to stuff a live M-80 into the unsuspecting maw of Spritzy, the family’s beloved Dalmatian, when the explosive power of that quarter-stick of dynamite exploded prematurely and blew up near a horrified Jimmy, trying to save the dog.  Mitzy dialed her family’s California Health Insurance agent in the nick of time. “Dial 911 – Stat!” he screamed over the phone. She did, and Jimmy was rushed to the nearest regional medical center via ambulance.

They all went to visit Jimmy after the surgery. He was bandaged up. “You look just like The Mummy from that movie,” remarked Johnny, displaying his usual contemptuous flair for the insensitive.   

“How’s Spritzy?” Jimmy managed to ask, barely audible through his wrappings.

Bastille Day falls on July 14^th every year. Lately, septuagenarian Pritella Pratt felt like storming a few Bastilles herself, and she wasn’t even French. She did enjoy French salad dressing on her Romaine lettuce, and had eaten French fries, but that doesn’t count. But on Bastille Day, 2010, the French Independence Day, Pritella was in a hurry and tripped coming down some cement steps. She kept her balance, but it was Pritella’s pratfall nonetheless, as by evening of that day, several hours later, she felt a sharp nagging ache in her lower back. What was Pritella to do? She called Mabel, her beloved California Health Insurance agent (Mabel had also been her pinochle partner when her husband had been alive), to learn if her Medigap supplemental coverage was still in effect. “Yes indeedy,” Mabel said in her strange Irish brogue, “it is.” Medicare was great, but after Plan D of the Bush years, she didn’t know what to expect. She rushed out of her house, headed for her car, a Studebaker, and tripped, more seriously this time, a second pratfall. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” she whispered as loudly as she could. Several more such vocalizations left Pritella feeling very old indeedy, and now her back was much worse. It was still Bastille Day, but almost dusk. A crow was cawing. Finally a good Samaritan named Sam came by, and helped Pritella to her Studebaker. Deep down the seventy-six-year-old felt a sprig of hope, like a probing tendril, because of Mabel’s affirmative words “Yes indeedy.” Those precious words were all that mattered now. Three blocks later, the urgent care center came into view. She could have walked there if it weren’t for her pratfalls. It was now dusk and a second crow cawed. Her back was killing her, perhaps literally as she didn’t know what was wrong.  Feeling a surge of “old lady” adrenalin, she managed to open the glass doors, and walked into the health care facility. “I’ve got Medicare, and Medigap supplemental,” she proudly said when asked by the receptionist, and promptly fainted.

It turned out that she’d “ruptured something,” and she needed to go the hospital for observation. Waking up in her hospital bed, her first thoughts were of Mabel – and not the bill.

John Smith and his wife Becca were preparing for their annual Father’s Day “cookout and fleshly barbeque” when the unthinkable happened. Usually the event drew the Smith’s three remaining children – Michael (named after the archangel), Mary (named after the mother of Jesus), and John Jr. (named after his Dad), ages 27, 29, and 31 respectively. Another Smith spawn was seldom spoken of. He’d left home at 18 for parts unknown, although rumors had surfaced that he’d become a Major League Baseball superstar for the Dodgers. Since the Smiths all hated baseball and none of them owned a television or radio, even if Daemon was playing shortstop with the Dodgers, his family wouldn’t have known. In fact, the family’s “black sheep” had become almost as famous as Manny Ramirez. Daemon was 32 now, and in fourteen years, there hadn’t been a single letter from the prodigal Smith son to any of his family members. Perhaps strangely, Daemon had become estranged.  

The accident involved the elder Smith. He was on the far side of Beverly Hills, his musket in hand, searching for a main course for the family’s upcoming “cookout and fleshly barbeque.”  If he’d been watching TV, he’d have known to avoid the far side of Beverly Hills. This nefarious region had become the lair of the infamous “Beverly Hills Wolverine.” It was on the news almost non-stop that day. The far side of Beverly Hills was like a ghost town.  “It’s awful quiet in these parts. Just me and my blunderbuss,” John Smith managed to say aloud, before the wolverine pounced. Wolverines are quite vicious. Just ask anyone from Michigan.

A California Health Insurance agent living in the neighborhood discovered Mr. Smith, who had purchased a policy on a prudent whim a few months back. The agent called ‘911.’ His second call was to the TV news stations.

On Father’s Day, the Smiths settled for turkey as their main course. Becca, Michael, Mary, and John Jr. were sitting down at the family picnic table with the bandaged John Sr., everyone in a melancholy mood when guess who showed up, bringing half the Dodgers?

Health Insurance

Everyone has a mother – even in California. A mother is often the first memory we have, and in most cases, except where the mother happens to be a “bad Mommy,” and often not even then, we tend to cherish our mothers and want to celebrate them on that Sunday in May set aside. Andrew S. Samaritan, a California Health Insurance agent based in Fresno, kept getting calls from his clients.

“Did you hear what they’re doing? I read it in the paper,” an elderly woman screamed, one who had a policy in good standing, “Andrew, are you listening to me?”

Andrew tried at first to accept the loss of Mother’s Day with quiet resignation. His mother and he had never gotten along. He began quietly humming. “Andrew!” the woman screamed again, “Mother’s Day is my day. It’s the only day that my son Mordred realizes I’m alive!”

Andrew knew Mordred, and didn’t particularly like him either, although he also purchased a policy and it was a family plan in good standing.  “I’ll see what I can do,” Andrew said, determined to do nothing, and hoping it would all blow over. It didn’t.

Mordred called next. “I can’t stand it!” he screamed, “My mother is going crazy over this thing about Mother’s Day being cancelled. You know the governor’s influential aide. Will you drive up to Sacramento and help?”

“It’s only cancelled for this year,” Andrew said, “until they get money back in the till.” He said this in the tone not fitting for an empathetic California Health Insurance agent, as if the crisis was no big deal.

“It IS a big deal!” screamed Mordred, as if HE were able to read Andrew’s mind, and hung up.

Seventy-eight calls from clients later, Andrew Samaritan decided to become a Good Samaritan. He got in his Honda Accord and headed up to the State Capitol.

The task at hand was speaking to the influential aide that he knew. The aide was actually Andrew’s sixth cousin, twice removed, once forcibly, in many ways a bad Samaritan.

But this story has a happy ending, and Mother’s Day was restored. Things would be fine for awhile, until everybody discovered that they’d cancelled Christmas.

May Day! May Day! It sounds a lot like Chicken Little saying that the sky is falling. Although the sky would fall if it could, as it happens to not be a big admirer of gravity, such a thing probably won’t happen in our lifetimes. So what’s all the commotion about?

Stephen P. Positive, a Polyannish California Health Insurance agent, had heard about May Day from several of his clients who had purchased policies. He was an honest guy, like virtually all California Health Insurance agents, just trying to make a living. Plus, his customers noted that he possessed a cheerful countenance within his “attitude of gratitude.”

One client who had a large family spoke of May Days past in the context of dancing around a Maypole, and celebrating the labor movement, but he was a liberal, and they were nearly extinct, weren’t they?

Mostly what Stephen got from his clients when they spoke about May Day were emergencies, most of them garden-variety in the larger scheme of things, certainly relative to a falling sky, which would indeed be a serious matter, Stephen mused, but most emergencies are just so important to someone when they are actually happening, even a kid falling off a swing, or grandpa forgetting to take his medication. So when he heard a litany of Maydays over the phone, every single day, they began to run together, which was human nature for Stephen, and you couldn’t really blame him.

It happened one day. Who would have thunk it? The client who was a liberal, his wife called Stephen, and she was frantic. “It’s my husband; he was dancing around the Maypole and …”

Stephen assured her that her husband was indeed covered, that their policy was in good standing, and he even calmly told her what to do next, about 911, and what to do with the Maypole, and not to shout “May Day! May Day!” over the phone when she called the emergency operator, acting Willy Nilly, as if she were Chicken Little.

Earth Day was a Gaia-bration in the Aguirre household. “We have to clean up the Earth,” Mother Mixie told five-year-old Brooklyn and three-year-old Emma-Jeanne, “That’s what Earth Day is for.”

But the girls didn’t want to go outside to the town dump to do clean up chores with a bunch of people, especially adults, that they didn’t know. Besides, they were watching Dora the Explorer on TV and Dora was about to do something really exciting. 

Mother Mixie had other ideas. She reached over to shut off the TV. “But Dora was going to”– Brooklyn said. Emma-Jeanne merely wailed. “Waaa!” she screamed.

The girls were marched off with Mother Mixie to the environs adjacent to the town dump where there were woods and lots of trash, mostly paper products to clean up, but no playground for kids and worse, no TV. “Here’s a big trash bag for my big girls,” Mother Mixie instructed. “It’ll be fun to fill it with trash — like those paper cups and plates,” she pointed to. But Brooklyn and Emma-Jeanne had other ideas. The grassy area by the woods where they were also had lots of wormholes where the worms came up for nice spring air. Brooklyn whispered something in her little sister’s ear. Both tykes smiled and with Mother Mixie off supervising and not paying attention, the commenced eating worms. “They’re like spaghetti,” Emma-Jeanne said, with a struggling worm blindly groping as it protruded from her little lips. The taste wasn’t so unpleasant and they weren’t chewing – but fifteen minutes later both toddlers were getting very sick. Finally, Mother Mixie looked over at them, her attention captured by Brooklyn’s last squirming snack. “What are you girls doing?” Mother Mixie screamed.  

But their diabolical plan had worked. Within five minutes the girls were headed toward the nearest ER. They even had a TV in their room in the children’s wing where they ended up. It was all paid for too – as Mother Mixie had purchased two child plans from a California Health Insurance agent. Guess what was on the TV? Why it was the very same episode of Dora the Explorer that they’d been watching when Dora was about to do something exciting.

He’d wanted to be normal since he’d been a boy. At 34, his bedroom was still littered with a menagerie of stuffed animals that provoked snide comments from his girlfriends – all the wrong kind of women anyway because they tended to be mother figures. He had to break these childhood patterns once and for all, and he’d settled on Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) as a cure.

His first mistake was going to bed, as usual in the shadow of Tony the Tiger and Gisele the Giraffe, each towering above his head on each side of his pillow, propped up in their verticality by the bed’s antique oaken headboard, without bothering to turn his alarm clock an hour ahead for the first day of Daylight Savings Time.  He had to arrive promptly at 8 a.m. at the Escondido NLP center to begin his life-changing all day seminar, centered upon combating the subjectivity that had so far made life without such imaginative creatures as Tony, Gisele, and their assorted brethren unthinkable.

The trouble began at 7:55 a.m. Daylight Savings Time when Maybelline, a matronly woman of 49 who loved to dote on “her Jonny,” called and roused him from a last minute half-asleep reverie. Jonathan was going to get up anyway in five minutes, as his alarm was set for 7:00 a.m. standard time.

“Hi May,” he said drowsily, “How come you’re calling so early?”

“Early,” she said, “It’s five minutes before eight. Don’t you have to be in Escondido at eight? It’s Daylight Savings, don’t you know?”

“Damn!” Jonathan exclaimed, “You’re right! I got to go!” Within ten minutes he’d completed his morning ablutions and was out the door without so much as a goodbye for Tony or Gisele.  

But he drove too fast. The accident happened just a mile from the center, a lamp post he didn’t see in time, a gouged radiator, a sprained ankle, an attempt to run, a collapse … he woke up in a hospital bed, a semi-private room.  A doctor was asking about whether he was covered, Jonathan answered in the affirmative, mumbled something about a California Health Insurance agent.

Suddenly, he saw them. Opening his eyes fully, he knew that he wasn’t alone. Somebody had brought Tony & Gisele and also a big stuffed dog, to keep him company.

Jack, John, Jerry, and Jim weren’t the brightest bulbs in the room even when they were sober. But to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, they crossed the line from merely asinine to outright stupidity. At 21, they were legal adults. They headed first to Paddy’s, a local pub. “Paddy’s has a lot of different beers – some of them are really green, and if they sell it in a green bottle, that counts too,” Jerry asserted. The decision had been to “go green” to celebrate the Irish saint’s feast day, even if none of the young men actually hailed from the Emerald Isle. On the way back to their dorm, Jack had the bright idea to search for “green food” amid the leftovers inhabiting their communal refrigerator. All moderately inebriated, the idea was soon seconded by the other three. “I’m sure we’ll find something that qualifies,” opined Jim, “I’m starved.”

The cooler contained a bounty of green foodstuffs, mostly inedible to sane & sober folk. But Jack, John, Jerry, and Jim were neither.  Jack found a plastic cup that had once contained fresh orange juice; orange was no longer visible as a layer of green mold had grown there. He dared John to drink it.

“Okay,” John declared while grabbing the cup from Jack and swallowing the contents. Oblivious to the taste, John noticed a container of mashed potatoes. He couldn’t remember how long the potatoes had been there.

“Alright Jerry, I dare you to eat the rest of these potatoes,” John said.

Jerry opened the container and gagged from the smell. “A dare is a dare,” he solemnly stated, beginning to shovel the bacteria-laden root vegetable into his gob.

Jim spied some guacamole dip that looked ancient enough. He was only able to get down three bites before he himself turned green and began to vomit.  John and Jerry were nauseous too, and soon were puking copiously alongside Jim. Jack, so far abstaining from the “green food,” grabbed a phone to call a cab, destination, the nearest ER. All four young men had coverage, courtesy of parental prudence and a California Health Insurance agent. Enroute to the hospital, the “boys” made a mess of the taxi’s interior, and caused quite a stink.  “You are disgusting” screamed the cabbie, but Jack tipped him an extra buck.

When Memorial Day came, Jack, John, Jerry, and Jim decided to make it really memorable. “Let’s go down to Paddy’s!” Jim suggested. This time, they just got good and drunk.