Waffle Iron Day, celebrated on the 13^th of March, held special significance for Caleb, 42, if not also for his wife Calin, 39.  It was on that national holiday when the Merced couple decided to “really do up breakfast” as Caleb put it. The original menu that morning was deceptively simple.  “Let’s just have bacon, eggs and whole wheat toast,” Calin suggested.

Unfortunately, Caleb wasn’t satisfied. He wanted waffles. “Today is Waffle Iron Day.” Caleb said, beginning to whine, “Did you know that National Waffle Iron Day has been a tradition in my family for more than a century?”

“I doubt it,” replied Calin, who was always willing to speak or even shout her mind, “It hasn’t been a holiday that long.”

“It has too,” Caleb shrieked, and he was close to tears, “My grandfather told us the whole story about how it came to be a national holiday on March 13^th.” 

“Whatever,” Calin said, already disgusted.

Caleb removed the waffle iron from the convenient cabinet where it’d been stored, and put it within Calin’s easy reach.   

“I want strawberries and blueberries and yams in my waffles,” Caleb said in a certifiably annoying tone.

“You want yams?” Calin screamed, “I’m allergic to yams! You knew that, too!”

Their argument escalated enough so that what happened next was predictable. Calin picked up the waffle iron, and conked her husband right on the noggin, knocking him cold.

She picked up the phone and called their California Health Insurance agent, who was also the tempestuous couple’s friend.  “Caleb’s out cold this time,” Calin cried, “I hit him with a waffle iron.”

“Oh that’s right, today’s National Waffle Iron Day again, isn’t it?” the agent asked. “Don’t worry, you’re covered. But better call an ambulance.”

Calin did just that, and a few minutes later, all the neighbors heard the siren. Caleb was still unconscious when he was carried into the ambulance.

“She really must have conked him good,” remarked Mrs. Kravitz, a nosy neighbor.

“What do you expect?” said Mr. Kravitz, “Some people can’t be trusted with a waffle iron.”

But one day, she came into work and her boss just point-blank berated her in front of her co-workers all because she was one-second late coming into the door and fired her on the spot.  Milagros was stunned, bewildered and scared and was at a total loss, so she called California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard for some advice.  For once in her life this was something that was unexpected, even as good at predicting things and taking precautionary measures as she has been known to do, she found herself in a bind: unemployed and uninsured all at once! 

The fall leaves were just turning its magnificent colors and the air was getting cooler as each day passed—ghouls, scarecrows, and pumpkin patches were cropping up everywhere; soon Christmas decorations. What in the world will she do now?  Does she want to go back to a nine-to-five clocking in the hours, overworked and under-appreciated, or does she want to finally pursue her dream of being a Cantonese translator, take that trip to China, a place she so long wanted to go? 

California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockhard reassured her at least she was covered in case of accidents and illnesses, so she set forth to forge her future, taking classes, freelancing here and there to pay her bills and what-not. 

Matt Lockhard contacted her after a year or so and found out that Milagros landed herself in rural California maintaining an apiary as well, with a fiancé and some land.  “We just came back from China,” Milagros told Matt.  “I will email you the pictures of us at the Great Wall of China!”

After California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockhard hung up the phone with Milagros, he smiled and thought to himself that dreams do come true after all.

Who would have thunk it? Byron Doomedee had been trained since the age of six as a croc hunter. Coming to America from his native Brisbane, he’d been hoping to get in the movies like other croc-hunting Aussies, but it never happened. In fact, Byron’s last real job — raking elephant dung at a small New Jersey zoo, had ended nearly a year ago. The elephant in question, a large African bull, had unfortunately developed constipation. Byron had moved on to Hollywood, briefly finding temp work at a traveling circus in Beverly Hills, wrestling alligators on Tuesdays. When the circus inevitably left town, Byron was bereft once again.  This meant pounding the pavement an awful lot. In August he’d paid an office call to a California Health Insurance agent, and after buying a policy there, an act which seemed at the time as aimless as being unemployed, he kept pounding the city’s sidewalks looking for a real job – hopefully something that didn’t involve a rake. One crisp autumn day, he learned from his entertainment agent that a television audition was in the works, and became so excited that he tripped on a crack that appeared in his mind’s eye like a crocodile’s jaws – and so fell and broke his tailbone in two places.

When Byron called his California Health Insurance agent for advice while lying flat on his back in terrible pain, his agent recommended that he hail a cab to the hospital if he could still hop, telling him to scream for a street side stretcher if not.  It turned out Byron was rescued by a rickshaw in the vicinity, one being towed by a marginally employed bull elephant that somehow looked familiar. Sitting atop the elephant, Byron nearly felt exhilarated again, almost as if he was back in New Jersey and gainfully employed. He was quite cushioned too, which lessened the pain in his twice-fractured tailbone. Dismounting at the nearest hospital proved to be a definite ordeal, but once there he was welcomed heartily. One of the doctors had a crocodile for him to see and knew by heart most of the movies he’d never been in.

Angela Nordzayum looked forward to Halloween more than her children. Having five of them meant a large haul of Halloween candy that needed to be checked and tested by an adult. Bill Nordzayum, her husband, was overseas with the Navy. This left only Angela to ensure that the candy was safe.

Since Halloween fell on a school night, after two hours of make-up and costume preparation, the Nordzayum kids piled into the bed of the family truck, allowing Angela to get them to as many houses as possible.

The trick-or-treating was a success. Knowing which neighborhoods give out the best candy is something you can only know after years of practice. Angela had a good feeling about this years’ haul.

Once they were home, Angela told the kids to place their candy on the dining room table. “Go clean up and put on your pajamas,” she told them. Having only two bathrooms meant Angela had plenty of time to go through the candy and pick out what she liked best. Under the guise of checking the candy for razorblades, poison, etc., she began sampling, which soon gave way to overindulging.

As the kids were finishing getting ready, they heard a loud thud. Billy Jr., the oldest, ran downstairs to see what was wrong. “Mom!” he screamed. She was sitting at the table face down in a large pile of candy wrappers. Without hesitation, the eleven-year-old grabbed the phone and called Matt Lockard, the family’s California Health Insurance agent, and described the situation.

“Mom ate too much of our candy Matt, what should we do?” Billy shrieked over the phone.

Matt was cool as a chocolate-covered cucumber. “Get an ambulance there as quick as you can,” he told the terrified boy.

The bloated Angela was comatose in the ambulance, but when she reached the hospital and was thoroughly examined, it was determined that she was in “sugar shock” as her glucose levels had briefly gone through the roof. Coverage in this instance became fortunate, as she required several days of hospitalization to bring her down from her sweet tooth high.  She didn’t develop Type 2 diabetes, but her pancreas was never again the same.

On Saturday, October 2^nd Alvin Andante took his teenage daughter Amy to a festival for Goths not far from her high school campus in Oxnard. A relevant flyer had touted the event as a “creepy day of fun that even Poe’s immortal raven would have loved” and stated, ominously as it turned out, that “anyone less than 18 would have to be accompanied by a parent or guardian.” This combination of wording should have given Alvin pause. In fact, just a few weeks prior, he’d been buying a new family policy at the office of Jim, Alvin’s friendly yet savvy California Health Insurance agent, and Jim had warned Alvin that fourteen-year-old Amy was “a rather impulsive teenager” and as a parent of three boys, three girls, and numerous pets, he should know. Amy just looked at her Dad and this man who sold health insurance and laughed her famous wicked laugh. But that was weeks ago.

“Please Daddy Waddy,” she had pleaded that morning. With her blonde hair dyed an inky black and a  macabre piercing protruding from her lower lip that made her Daddy wince just to think about, how could he refuse?

At the booth where they sold finger foods, Alvin bought a breaded concoction which looked tasty.  When he bit down on something crunchy that snapped and cracked between his teeth, and almost immediately heard his daughter scream, followed by her famous wicked laugh, as she held up her bloody hand with what appeared to be a broken finger …

Was that terror he saw in his daughter’s peculiar eyes? Why was she laughing if he’d just broken her finger? Within minutes, her entire hand began to swell, and one of his questions got neatly answered – even if the jagged bone fragment spelled ‘mayhem’ with a lowercase M.

“We’re going to Urgent Care little girl,” he yelled above the din in his paternal mind. He also told Amy to stop that idiotic laughter as it was confusing him. Father and daughter took off toward their Lexus just as something avian and hideous, was that a raven?—swooped down from a Gothic sky.

The danger is not Charlie Brown real, but really real. Halloween is supposed to be a night when children seeking candy are the ones coming to your door, not evil giant pumpkins. But Homeland Security of Greater Los Angeles is warning that the threat level will be on red alert this Halloween.

“Most residents should expect a knock on their door that will be unfamiliar, five hard strikes followed by a soft knock,” warned California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard, “and if you dare to ask ‘Who is it?’ the reply in an itty bitty pumpkin voice will be, ‘Land pumpkin, special delivery for …’ and believe me, that evil giant pumpkin will know your name.”

Why land pumpkin? Aren’t all pumpkins terrestrial? “Scientists of pumpkinology have been attributing the odd greeting to a skit airing some years ago on NBC’s Saturday Night Live which featured ‘land sharks’ knocking on doors in a similar fashion,” Lockard asserted, “and we all know what those comic creations were capable of.”   

How large are these evil giant pumpkins? “It varies,” said Lockard, “some may weigh up to a metric ton theoretically, depending on the growing season in the garden, grove, or patch where they originated.” 

What if a person is bitten by a giant pumpkin, assuming that they have teeth? “Most cases of ‘pumpkin nip’ which have been occurring are painful, but seldom fatal,” asserted Lockard, “but the only antidote I’m aware of is to purchase a California Health Insurance policy at your earliest convenience.  It’s uncanny,   but even the most vicious giant pumpkins will not attack someone who has adequate coverage.”  What kind of coverage? “It doesn’t matter, any policies offered by your nearest and dearest California Health Insurance agent will work fine – it’s like that garlic thing with vampires.”

The phenomenon has received considerable coverage by scientists of pumpkinology in the literature, and the reasons why the ‘insurance purchase’ option works as a preemptive remedy is not entirely understood. One pumkinologist, bolder than the rest, has recommended that buying a policy for this reason specifically from Matt Lockard produces a kind of lifetime immunity to ‘pumpkin nip’ – at least in most instances.

Aaron, a lanky 12-year-old about to begin 7^th grade, was in the middle of his pubertal growth spurt. His wrists and ankles seemed barely attached by their tendons and sinews to his arms and legs, and like a lot of boys his age – he was at that klutzy stage.  “Aaron, pick up your feet!” his loud-voiced mom would scream seeing her son stumble off, embarrassing him in front of his friend, he only had one, another young klutz named Ralph, but Aaron’s mom didn’t extend her nagging ear-piercing soprano to her neighbor’s kid. Miraculously, Aaron, who might have felt safer trapped during puberty in a Mason jar, didn’t get seriously injured during that summer before entering 7^th grade with the rest of his tweener peers. Other than a few cuts and bruises experienced as consequences received from clumsily falling over steps and tripping over obstacles of sundry description, Aaron managed to escape that summer unscathed.

But the first day of school was another story. During first period, right after homeroom, Aaron was already late as it had been gym, he started running to his algebra class in the hall, and by the time his gym teacher could finish yelling, “Hey Mason! Pick up your feet!” Aaron had become tangled up in his own legs and tripped, falling flat on his chin and smacking his jaw against the middle school’s hardwood floor, just polished by the school janitor minutes before and very treacherous. Aaron was knocked cold and carried out of his school into a waiting ambulance on a stretcher.

Ralph went to see Aaron in the hospital, and was there when his friend woke up in his hospital bed. So was a California Health Insurance agent who happened to be courteously checking in on the Mason kid, a tall man with glasses whom neither Ralph nor Aaron immediately recognized. “Who is he?” Aaron whispered through clenched teeth to his friend, his jaw shot full of painkillers.    

“I’m Clark Kent, a California Health Insurance agent,” the strange man replied. Oddly, he also spoke through clenched teeth – but in his case it was merely an idiosyncrasy.

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.

In lieu of a day off on that fateful August 15^th, Matt Lockard wanted to at least have a relatively easy day. Most of his fondest memories in some way were involved with National Relaxation Day, or at least a degree of relaxation.

By 11 a.m., he’d seen seven clients, customers and prior policyholders march through his office door, families with their family plans, the elderly and the newlyweds, and even a llama that ambled in off the street and actually wasn’t a customer.

A woman from somewhere in the Middle East came by in a burka, and a pirate wanted one of those special policies to protect his interests on the high seas – as he was wary of other pirates with all that’d been going on lately in the Indian Ocean. They came in to make the day ultra-hectic and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.

Cripes Matt Lockard whined (fortunately only in his mind’s eye), it’s National Relaxation Day and I can’t have a leisurely day just because my gig is California Health Insurance policies. It seems that everyone in California has some kind of health care concern that a policy can address.

Just then some college students came in, and they wanted a group policy that would protect them from potential injuries incurred at keg parties. Five of the six were young men, all enrolled in California schools getting in-state tuition and the straggler was an attractive young woman, unmarried but majoring in animal husbandry she soon revealed. Ten minutes later, Matt was at it again, part of a flurry of frenetic, attending to needs of people that had to be met.

More pirates in the afternoon, but these happened to be transplants to the Los Angeles environs from Pittsburgh. A bald-headed centenarian walked in preceded by his cane, and he wanted a policy that would somehow last to provide a legacy perhaps. Soon it was five of the clock and the sun was beginning to approach the horizon and Matt Lockard, a man who had missed his chance to relax, was about to set. The phone rang just then …