Posts Tagged ‘Childrens Insurance Plan’

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.

Teens need their beauty sleep

Friday, September 25th, 2009

When 15-year-old twins Alexander and Penelope began developing a myriad of symptoms, it was a mystery until a series of visits to a nearby hospital’s sleep clinic began to produce some answers. Their frantic parents would have been even more in a tizzy if the hospital bills hadn’t been covered – thanks to their California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard.

 ”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.

Maple Tree Allergy and a Sneeze Attack

Friday, September 11th, 2009

All 13-year-old Billy Blalock wanted to do was rake his neighbor’s leaves to earn some spending money. When the sneezing fits began, the boy’s plans were threatened unless he could swallow a potent antihistamine prescribed by the family doctor. Thankfully a California Health Insurance Agent had made the price of the pills a little easier for Billy’s parents to swallow.


California health insurance sneeze
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.