When California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard was growing up, cartoon characters like Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert and Porky Pig made kids laugh. But in those days, most “fat” kids were merely chubby, few were obese, and even fewer were morbidly obese. “I watched Fat Albert and Porky Pig and Miss Piggy and the Muppets, and they made me laugh,” explains California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard with a hint of nostalgia in his voice, “I’m not sure I even knew any really fat kids when I was a boy, and in any case, we all exercised and played sports along with watching TV. I might have played a little Pac Man as a teenager, but not for hours and hours like a lot of the kids today. There was a balance generally speaking.”  The operative word is “was.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 19 percent of American children (over 10 million) 6-19 years old are overweight or obese – a number that has more than tripled since 1980 when Matt was growing up. In addition, over the past three decades the childhood obesity rate for preschool children aged 2-5 years and adolescents aged 12-19 years has more than doubled, and studies have shown that overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight or obese adults.

“The repercussions of childhood obesity certainly impact the health insurance industry,” Lockard asserts, “along with a lack of preventative care and emphasis, obesity in general and childhood obesity in particular are major factors bringing up the cost of U.S. health care.”

Experts and Lockard are in agreement that inactivity and poor eating habits contribute greatly to obesity’s prevalence and recent rise to epidemic status, and the trends are getting worse, not better. “They eat fast food and junk food primarily, and are way too sedentary,” Lockard argues, “it’s a national tragedy that’s just beginning to be scrutinized.”

Obesity-related diseases such as Type 2 diabetes are already assuming epidemic proportions along with the obesity itself, with pediatric diabetes increasing as much as 60% since 1995. As adults, these health issues experienced in childhood account for “more than half of all hospitalizations,” according to Lockard. Yet despite these grim statistics, “That’s not where politicians place their emphasis,” Lockard concludes.

She’d wanted to save money. Haircuts were getting expensive. Why not? Marta Higgins mused. Her six-year-old would be getting a home haircut. The boy was anything but pleased. “Mommy; I want to go to the real barbershop.” Too old to have a tantrum, he had one anyway. It didn’t make any difference. Eventually, he was sitting up in a kitchen chair. She had promised to give him a cookie afterwards.      

Chip was well-behaved from then on, trying to sit absolutely still. Marta had never cut hair before. Once she’d dreamed of becoming a stylist in a unisex salon, but that’s when she’d been just eight.  Still, how hard could it be?  After draping a towel over Chip’s chest and shoulders, she grabbed a comb and scissors and just started cutting. Running the comb through her boy’s hair, she instinctively used it as a guide. “Mommy is doing a fine job,” she said to her son, as if to reassure him.

“I wish I could go to the barbershop,” the boy blurted.   

In fact, she was close to finishing, when the phone rang.  Distracted, suddenly she noticed when Chip started screaming that it wasn’t just hair she was cutting. Chip screamed again and was soon sobbing. Was that a piece of his earlobe that she now grasped in the pinching grip of her scissors? Blood came pouring out of the wound, and began running down his face and neck.

“Oops,” she said, “my bad.” She realized how remarkably calm she was.  It was a good thing she kept the phone number of her California Health Insurance Agent handy on the fridge. 

Matt Lockard came on the phone. “Yes?”

When Marta explained what had happened, Matt advised her to save the ear lobe, “Don’t lose it, whatever you do!” he said, rather loudly, to the voice on the phone, “Head right now to the nearest hospital ER, don’t waste a minute!”

“But my friend Sally called. I need to call her back. What if she has an emergency?” Marta said.

“YOU have your own emergency!” Matt screamed, in concert with Chip, who was still screaming.

“It will be expensive!” Marta howled.

“Don’t worry, you’re covered!” Matt explained. 

Thereafter, Chip always hid whenever his mom mentioned the word “hair,” but except for what the boy would forever refer to as his “Quasimodo” scar, he eventually recovered.

Gifford loved his turkey. No, literally. Gifford loved his turkey. A Sullivan family tradition was to have the eldest child raise a wild turkey that would, at the appointed time, a few days prior to Thanksgiving, be sacrificed as the family’s dinner. “Don’t get too attached to that turkey, Giff,” his mom tried to tell him, but such an admonition was useless. The animal-loving twelve-year-old had come to consider Isabelle (yes, the boy had already secretly named the hen turkey purchased to be slaughtered) a member of their family and a cherished pet. Every morning before school he’d gone into the turkey’s pen in the backyard of the Sullivan’s Oxnard home to feed and clean up after and otherwise nurture the growing fowl; he was conniving for a way to somehow save “Isabelle’s” life. 

Gifford’s siblings Wayne and Toby were relatively indifferent to Gifford’s conflict.  “That turkey is going to be the best Thanksgiving meal ever,” teased ten-year-old Wayne, “it’s better than any store-bought butterball.” Nine-year-old Toby was even worse in his way, tormenting his older brother while acting innocent as a sacrificial lamb. “Which part do you like best? I go for drumsticks,” he taunted. Gifford would run off sobbing to the sanctuary of Isabelle’s backyard pen, to hug the bewildered turkey.

Finally, the execution day came. Godfrey Sullivan raised the axe beside the chopping block which was also in the Sullivan’s backyard, and just as the horrific scene with the turkey caught in the vise …

Gifford ran headlong toward his father, his only thought to rescue Isabelle as the axe was raised at the proper angle and began descending …

The axe fell and the boy screamed. Blood gushed everywhere. The family headed toward the nearest hospital’s ER, protected only cost-wise by a convenient family health plan sold to them the previous year by California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard.

Gifford developed amnesia after the accident. “Did you get enough to eat?” his mom asked.

 “Yeah, mom, but I got a question. How come I had to have veggie burgers instead of turkey like everybody else?”

 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.

 ”Asleep” The Smiths

Alexander and Penelope were identical twins except for their gender. Blonde and blue-eyed, with perfect skin and on the cusp of being adults, the twins thrived during a marvelous summer.  Tennis camp, sleepovers, surfing and swimming, camping, parachuting from 15,000 feet in their Dad’s twin-engine aircraft, the Smith kids played hard and slept hard, uninterrupted, for the months trailing the June solstice in the land of Ventura night. But when school began just before Labor Day, the teens began to change before their parent’s eyes.

Alexander developed a cyst under his left eye. Penelope began stumbling as if she were nearsighted although her vision had been tested in July at 20-10 left and right. Adolescence suddenly bred entire tribes of pus-filled pimples.   Alexander became injury prone: When he tried to run he tripped most times, his perfectly proportioned legs no longer coordinated.  “Something’s wrong,” Ashley their mom told Gary, their father, who was sure that there wasn’t. “It’s just the awkward stage,” he asserted.

“Are they both just being awkward?” Ashley Smith countered.

“They’re both teenagers,” Gary shrugged.

But the twins kept getting worse.  Finally, because they did have a family plan purchased from California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard, Gary relented and took both 15-year-olds over to Dr. Nicole Tesla, the family’s trusted primary care physician. When she examined them, she knew the answer almost immediately. “How much are they sleeping?” she asked.

“They go up to their bedrooms,” Gary said. “The lights are out. Of course they’re sleeping.”

“How do you know?” asserted Dr. Tesla. When she spoke, electric sparks seemed to give a bluish tint to her waiting room’s tepid air. She suggested they find out for sure.  Both twins were wired to biofeedback equipment on school nights to satisfy Dr. Tesla’s medically-based hunch.  

Was this equipment covered? Gary called Matt Lockard to find out. It was.  

The results were amazing. The kids weren’t getting their REM, the productive kind of rest signaled by rapid eye movements. “Teenagers need their beauty rest,” Dr. Tesla concluded.

“Alexander needs his too?” Ashley wondered.  

“He sure does,” Dr. Tesla pronounced.

“But they have to go to school!” Gary said. The solution seemed simple: a modified school day built around later mornings and longer afternoons, a 9-5 adjustment. It was as if a solstice had returned to the land of Ventura night.

Billy Blalock was eager to earn extra money. He needed a new skateboard and Playstation 3, but his parents were scrimping just to get by. His “job,” raking leaves at the Jones next door in their modest Rancho Bernardo ‘hood’, seemed like a no-brainer. When Sally Jones, a pert brunette thirty-something whom Billy considered “a second mom,” agreed to Billy’s raking after school, the teenager was elated.

“I can rake!” he exclaimed to Betty, his first mom, “I can rake!”

“Yes you can,” she replied deadpan, sort of like a 34-year-old feminine version of a Caucasian Barack Obama.   

But a strange thing happened on the way to Billy’s raking. Underneath the Jones’s imported maple tree, an exotic from New England, Billy sneezed. He returned to raking. He sneezed again.  He started raking again, a bit more tentatively this time. Suddenly he sneezed in a burst, once, twice, three times, perhaps a hundred times as he couldn’t stop sneezing. Billy was sneezing so hard he was crying. He ran away in tears from the poisonous tree straight to Sally’s ample bosom. “Second mom! Second mom!”  Billy cried, “I can’t.”  

“You can’t what?” Sally asked, noticing the tears in the eyes of her neighbor’s son.

“Rake,” Billy blurted, sobbing.

Billy’s real mom Betty decided to seek a medical solution since they’d purchased an individual child’s plan from a California Health Insurance agent.  Dr. Quag was friendly to Billy at his office and patted his belly several times, which seemed a bit weird to the boy. The prescription, however, gave Billy hope. The doctor prescribed sixty milligrams twice a day of a drug called fexofenadine, also referred to as Allegra, and the funny thing was, Billy had even heard of it, having seen it recently on a TV commercial. 

“Allegra,” Billy said, “I’ll be taking Allegra so I can rake by the maple tree!”

“Yes, you can,” said Dr. Quag, “if you remember to take your peach-colored pills!”

Betty was there too. “It’s peachy that Billy’s Allegra isn’t costing me out of pocket,” she said.

“Are they peach flavored?” Billy asked.

He was the biggest-boned kid in the 16-member Pedroia clan. At age 14, Rudy was downright husky as Pedroias went, graced with good looks and a sturdy physical stature freshly bestowed upon him by puberty. But in the harsh glare of the stadium klieg lights, he weighed only 87 pounds fully dressed in pads and gear, and a California health insurance agent triumphantly emerged as the family’s hero.Bakersfield’s Rudy Pedroia was a born athlete. At age ten, his father Randy first spied his son’s potential. When the kid pranced barefoot in the summer heat, “My boy has an athlete’s foot,” he casually remarked.  

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Rudy practiced. He knew every play. Fleet of athlete’s foot, the day came when he made the varsity squad. A freshman, the Pedroia’s little star sat on the bench on that fateful night. His wise parents had purchased a child’s individual health insurance plan for their son, just in case. Rudy was third-string; at four feet five and 87 pounds, no one beyond the Pedroia clan figured that Rudy would actually play. Still, the entire family watched as they always did. Randy was proud.  “He has athlete’s feet!” he would brag to anyone within earshot while attracting looks of mild disdain. Finally Rudy’s big moment came. The home team’s first-string tackle broke an ankle and was carried off the field on a stretcher. The second-string tackle got clotheslined in the groin and nearly lost his tackle. When that unconscious 200-pounder was carted off, the coach looked at the bench and saw … “You!” he barked, “Get in there!” The crowd uttered a collective gasp.  “He’s so shrimpy!” somebody’s grandmother screeched. But Rudy knew the plays.

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It didn’t really matter. While attempting to trip up the touchdown sprint of a monstrous fullback, Rudy’s outstretched toes served as a launching pad for the opposing team’s end zone. The sound of a Pedroia metatarsal crunching could be heard at the fifty-yard line.   Gathered around Rudy’s bed in his semi-private room where all three of Bakersfield High’s wounded players were hospitalized, only Rudy’s family was smiling. “What?” Randy Pedroia said, “My son has athlete’s feet!” Since they had purchased a teenager’s plan from a California Health Insurance agent, they could afford to smile.

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Jimmy Malcolm, age 12, epitomized the word “brat.” He blithely ignored the lifeguard at the county pool. But when Jimmy’s mother and the repentant boy went in to thank California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard, he was as pleased as the Malcolm family that they’d purchased a suitable group policy.

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The lifeguard, Freddy Feldspar, was getting really annoyed. This kid epitomized the word “brat,” a 12-year-old man-child in the promised land of the Oxnard Community Pool making the lifeguard screech and bark incessantly. “No running!” yelled Feldspar at the careless boy who kept dashing to and fro, along the sides of the pool, skidding on the wet surface in his bare feet, jumping in and quickly out again in some frenetic rabid dance of pubescent energy, “Can’t you see the signs?” But Jimmy Malcolm wasn’t paying attention to the signs or to the clearly annoyed lifeguard, a college age red-haired man who made little impression on the energized boy. Jimmy looked at him once or twice, but his expression was one of indifference, perhaps even a mild disdain. Unfortunately, the signs were there for a reason, as such behavior on the part of errant boys is an accident waiting to happen. Jimmy kept it up at breakneck speed, his soles wet and slippery, running and dashing, diving into the crowded public pool, and then climbing out and beginning his mad dashes all over again. The 12-year-old escaped a mishap for perhaps longer than he should have, his feet barely in control along the wet tiles, but then the inevitable happened.

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“No running!” Freddy Feldspar cried out one last time. The words had barely emerged from his lips when the inevitable transpired. Everyone at the pool saw Jimmy slip and fall, and scrape the skin off his right ankle when he did. Five stitches and an urgent care facility visit later, a more contrite Jimmy Malcolm and his mother Madge went to see California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard in his office a few days later, “My son and I just wanted to thank you for selling us that small business policy last year,” she said, “It came in very handy a few days ago.” “Oh?” queried Matt spying a rather obvious protective bandage around young Jimmy’s sandal-cloaked right ankle. “So what happened?” Jimmy spoke shyly, almost as if a tabby cat had gotten his tongue. “There was this lifeguard …”

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When a Father’s Day traditional pig roast results in accidental burn injuries to a gentle boy’s hands, it’s fortunate that his parents had purchased a child’s policy from California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard.

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The Smuckers of Visalia didn’t make jams and jellies, but for five generations the family had purchased a piglet during the previous December from a local pig farm for roasting on the upcoming Father’s Day. Always the eldest Smuckers child would be charged with raising the piglet to maturity in order for it to be slaughtered on its appointed day in June. This festive and delicious tradition was eagerly anticipated by one and all, although the boy or girl raising the piglet usually had harbored mixed feelings amid a sense of dread about the animal to be inevitably sacrificed. Dan J. Smuckers had told his son Jeffy, age 8, not to get too attached to his piglet. “It’s not a pet Jeffy. It’s just your job to raise him so he gets nice and plump with good meat on him,” he warned.

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But Jeffy was unlike other Smuckers children preceding him. “Yes Daddy,” the boy said, but he already harbored forbidden feelings of affection for his piglet, having secretly named him “Spot” because of a small brown birthmark on its little pink hindquarters. Jeffy was a gentle kid and loved animals, but he’d never been allowed to have a pet.

“Spot” grew up at a normal pace and bonded with Jeffy, often letting the soft-hearted boy scratch him behind the ears. His eight-year-old mind tried frantically to devise a scheme to rescue his porcine friend from its looming encounter with the spit. The pig, for its part, grew big and fat. Finally, it was June, and time for “Spot” to be executed in the shed. Dan surmised his son’s misgivings, and performed the murderous deed when Jeffy was at a sleepover one Saturday. While Jeffy cried and screamed when he found out, he was quiet on Father’s Day until the festive time had arrived, and “Spot” was appropriately spitted. But Jeffy appeared like an avenging little angel when the party was in full swing and the cooking had commenced, and when the boy grabbed the red hot pig to wrench it off the spit ….

Jeffy really cried and screamed as both of his hands were badly burnt. As the family’s SUV raced along to the local hospital’s emergency room, Dan reassured himself with words that he hoped would calm his tender-hearted (and tender-handed) son. “Don’t worry Jeffy. I know you’re sad because of that pig. But at least treatment in the hospital burn unit will be covered because we purchased a child’s health insurance policy from our California agent, Matt Lockard.” But Jeffy just screamed all the louder.

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Bill and Edna Octavian each came from large families. Raised as friendly neighbors among the majestic redwoods of Mt. Shasta country, Bill was seventh of ten children; Edna was third eldest in an “old-fashioned” family of eleven siblings. When they married as childhood sweethearts in 1986, it was not surprising that Edna was soon “expecting.” Fifteen offspring later, she finally became content just to mother the ones she’d already had. “Cheaper by the dozen,” Bill liked to say, and the first dozen; Cynthia, Edna Jr., Sam, Trevor, Robert, Fred, Karen, Octavia, Peter, Simone, Clifton, and Roger, seemed that way at times, but then along came Paul, Maureen, and Sippy. In fact, it was Sippy’s broken arm (she fell from a backyard redwood while playing “I can see ALL the Octavians!”), that precipitated the discovery: The family no longer had health insurance! They’d had it back in the early 1990s when Sam was still the youngest, but they’d allowed that plan to expire, not giving it undue thought being preoccupied with other matters, and now all these kids later, it seemed that even finding a decent plan suited to their prolific circumstances would prove a task suitable for Paul Bunyan. But how to pay for Sippy’s surgery, there’s the rub. Bill felt overwhelmed and decided to pay the hospital bill out of pocket. But being a mere copywriter at an advertising agency, he suddenly worried about the next time. Fortunately, he knew just what to do. “I’m going to find us a California health insurance agent,” he told Edna. Edna, prone to pinching pennies, in this case unwisely, screamed, “No Bill, don’t do it! What if it’s a long distance call?” But Bill was undeterred.

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A few days later, The Octavians not only had their “king-sized” family plan, as Bill and Edna referred to it, but also a CURRENT and extremely helpful California health insurance agent to call their own. “He’s a nice man,” little Sippy said matter-of-factly, her arm still encased in a cast.

Matt Lockard – California Health Insurance agency offers health insurance plans for individuals, families, and children. Also available are California Medicare Supplement policies. Go to http://mattsinsurance4ca.com to get an instant health insurance quote.

Matt Lockard – California Health Insurance agency offers health insurance plans for individuals, families, and children. Also available are California Medicare Supplement policies. Go to http://mattsinsurance4ca.com to get an instant health insurance quote.

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