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.

Graeme Greeme was first and foremost a designated driver on that fateful New Year’s Eve. Flossie L. Taylor, age 106, had been imbibing single malt Scotch for the simple reason that she still could, and was “drunk as a skunk,” in her own slurred words, as she prepared to get behind the wheel of her silver Porsche for the drive home at 10:45 p.m. He’d been hired for the expressed purpose of “driving Miss Flossie,” as she was now called, but aside from the ancient lady’s typical alcohol-induced stupor, Mr. Greeme noticed something seriously amiss. Although her lightheadedness was less than obvious under the circumstances, all of the other signs, the cold sweats, vomiting, chest discomfort, neck pain, and shortness of breath – were linked inexorably to Poe’s Telltale Heart, as well as Flossie’s. “I’m having a heart attack,” the ancient Miss Taylor managed. Her words were the giveaway. Instead of “home,” their destination became the nearest hospital emergency room. The expensive car became a silver bullet. Graeme Greene’s prompt action saved Miss Flossie’s life. Her words, although uttered through spurting phlegm-coated bubbles of fine whisky, had proved prophetic.

At the Last Lutheran Church of Oxnard, her great-great-grandson, Matt Lockard, who happened to be a California Health Insurance agent with an office in Ventura, spoke a few words in recognition of Graeme Greeme’s selfless and timely act. Lockard’s voice, a slender baritone, was choked with emotion. “Tonight we are honoring a hero. Not only did this man save my great-great grandmother’s life by recognizing the signs of a heart attack and swiftly getting her to the nearest ER where she was thankfully covered due to a Medicare Advantage policy that she’d purchased from me many years ago, but he also did it safely while traveling at a high rate of speed through city traffic in that death trap meant for the racetrack that she owns.” He flashed his beloved ancient relative a withering look, but as usual she gazed back at her younger relative with a disconcerting centenarian’s smirk. Still, waves of applause reverberated through the church. As for Mr. Graeme Greeme, he smiled a hero’s grin, knowing that it was all part of “driving Miss Flossie.”

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Mabel Mobry, still spry after surviving for exactly a century, pined for the days when she could get high with reckless abandon before all those Draconian blue laws gummed things up. When she was younger, she’d gone to Woodstock and heard Jimmy Hendrix play the national anthem. She relished her infamous pot parties, toking up and going straight to the bong, and getting a buzz. She’d married a man named Buzz, her third husband, as a way to immortalize those halcyon days, but he’d died in the bicentennial year, 1976, and that was a while ago. But now, in 2009, the pendulum was swinging back. Downtown and in the suburbs, marijuana was alive again, quasi-legal, if you used it for medical purposes. Stores sold it openly, if you had a prescription from a doctor. But Mabel was quite healthy for a centenarian. “I don’t feel a day over 94,” Mabel said to her cat, Woodstock, a white Angora that liked to party. What could she do to get her bong out again, a relatively law abiding old lady’s simple pleasure?  

Suddenly she had a brilliant idea, concerning her 2010 Medicare Advantage plan, the documents comprising it just sitting on the blue kitchen table getting dusty. Rock music started pounding in her head, Led Zeppelin playing some sort of anthem. She felt the freedom to act like Buzz’s warm caressing fingers remembered. He was her favorite husband when it came to physicality. Ring, once was all it took as her trusted California Health Insurance agent, a devout liberal thank God, picked up.

“Mrs. Mobry,” he said, sounding like a cherub although he had to be at least sixty, “What can I do you for?” A free spirit, the guy liked the freedom to juxtapose. He was humming the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem. 

She came straight to the point. Woodstock was listening and nodded his approval. “Can my 2010 Medicare Advantage PPO plan incorporate a prescription for medical marijuana? Would such treatments be covered?”

“Do you have any medical conditions that might apply?” asked the cherubic California Health Insurance agent.

Mabel thought about it, but didn’t want to lie. “I might be going blue blind,” she said, shading the truth just a mite, as she could still see well enough to watch the Freedom Bowl parade on television, with its colorful anthem playing.

“That might do,” said the cherubic agent, “That just might do you.”

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Our National Anthem

Maisie M. Mynah was a sweet blue haired sixty-eight-year-old from Eureka who other than being able to whistle the national anthem tended to repeat herself and mimic behaviors so that it annoyed those around her. She’d been married eleven times and was still searching for that special guy special guy special guy. After hearing so much lately about health care reform, she decided to call a California Health Insurance agent for advice about her 2010 Medicare Advantage plan. After bussing south from Eureka to the Los Angeles area in order to pay a surprise visit to Max, her 7^th estranged husband, the only one who could still stand her, she looked up an agent named Matt Lockard, whose office was conveniently located in Ventura near where Max kept his bungalow.

“Hello. I’m Maisie Mynah, we’ve never met, but I’d like to discuss switching to a Medicare Advantage PPO. Can I make an appointment?”

“Sure,” Matt said, “When are you coming down?”

Maisie told him her circumstances, repeating herself a little too often, Matt mused. As he listened intently, he waited for her monotonous and repetitive voice to trail off, only it never did, instead it seemed like she hummed what sounded ominously like “saved by zero” the cryptic refrain from a  Toyota commercial, over and over, in the manner of an anthem.  

When Maisie showed up face-to-beak, as it were, it got worse. She strolled into Matt’s office. The bluish-blonde-haired eleven-time divorcee’s gait seemed mincing. Her voice grated on the California Health Insurance agent’s ears. Even simple phrases like “I’d prefer a PPO” repeated like another anthem reminded Matt of toenails scraping across a blackboard.  “I have Medicare Advantage,” Maisie finally managed, “but a PPO will give me more freedom freedom freedom,” she blurted in a parroted paroxysm of repetitiveness.

Matt felt like he wanted to scream. Although he had the freedom to do so he was always so polite to his customers. It was like a curse in these situations. “I’ll set you up with a PPO Medicare Advantage Plan,” he said.

“You mean in my Medicare Advantage?” Maisie squawked. She then proceeded to repeat herself several more times, once again in the manner of an anthem.

Matt kept that cursed smile on his own face – right up until Maisie finally left.  For weeks afterwards, that Toyota  jingle “saved by zero” played inside his head like a trapped cricket.

Nelson J. McElroy’s golden hostas had been holding him hostage all summer long. It seemed like there were armies of hostas in their environs, a redundant beauty on the march. After tolerating the pervasive blooms from his recently purchased lawn chair for as long as he could stand it, while sipping on a glass of lemonade, he decided to get to work trimming the stems. His wife Gertrude ambled over. She watched as Nelson squatted on aged bent knees with pruning shears in hand. He mentioned he was feeling a little dizzy along with a twinge of nausea. “I should probably sit down,” he added. As he returned to his chair, Gertrude noticed his left leg having difficulty matching the stride of his right, the left step diminishing like a chimera with every stride.

Nelson collapsed, landing on his pruning shears which were fortunately positioned blades down. “Oh Nelson!” Gertrude heard herself exclaim. Fearing the possibility of  a stroke, Gertrude recalled Matt Lockard, a pleasant semi-bearded California Health Insurance agent, the one who’d sold them their excellent Medicare Advantage plan just last year. She herself had utilized their coverage with a hospital stay as recently as May when her gall bladder had acted up. She decided immediately to ring Matt up. Thank the insurance God he was there. “Yes,” he said. He always sounded so calm when she spoke to him. A moment later, the decisive Lockard had contacted the 911 operator and ordered an ambulance for the McElroys.

She watched him the entire way to the hospital, terrified but trying to be brave while sitting next to him as he reclined with the tubes already in him on the ambulance stretcher. Every bumpy jolt made her heart race.

Days later in recovery Matt Lockard came to see them both.  “How are you doing?” he asked, the question directed at her as well as toward her now responsive husband.

“I had a stroke,” Nelson said, “because of those damned hostas.”

“Stop your cursing!” admonished Gertrude as Matt Lockard barely suppressed a grin. 

74-year-old Padraig O’Brien loved to watch those scooter commercials on TV. “You can have your scooter, with no out-of-pocket expense,” the announcer crooned. Like several of his friends at the Elysium Trailer Park in Oxnard, Padraig was otherwise confined to a wheelchair. One day Padraig and several peers purchased dandy electric-powered scooters using their Medicare Supplement insurance policies to help defray their cost.  Visiting the Grand Canyon while maneuvering among crowds of tourists on their scooters didn’t appeal to anyone at Elysium, but once everyone had their scooters, something else became evident:  the thrill of scooter speed.

“I think we should set up a race track,” suggested Tony Pilano, at 79, a near-octogenarian assumed to be Elysium’s resident sage. Mary Falafel, who spoke Arabic but wasn’t a 73-year-old terrorist, preferring to decorate or draw, agreed. “I can make banners,” she said. She loved to draw nude men.

The race track was set up along the trailer park’s wide walking paths. In preparation for the big scooter race, the “main drag” was clearly marked by Mary’s banners, a few of them rather lewd. Fourteen scooters set to race lined up. Someone had brought a starter’s pistol. The electric hum of racing scooters was vaguely reassuring to many in the crowd of geezer gawkers. 

Tony and Padraig jousted for the lead, each rubbing the other like NASCAR drivers. Mary was running a strong third. As her scooter tipped, she reached for what she thought was a convenient handle …

 Exactly what occurred in those next crucial two seconds will never be precisely known.  

The aftermath featured the friendly California Health Insurance agent dutifully tying up loose ends after the participants had returned to Elysium. Mary brought up what was on everybody’s mind. “Let’s have another race,” she exclaimed.  A silence ensued leaving her words hanging in the California air.

A tear formed in Padraig’s eye.  “Tony would have liked that,” he concluded.

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Mrs. Tumera Yakamora, 87, weighed less than ninety pounds, but her Medigap coverage purchased from that bird-loving Matt Lockard was in effect if she ever needed it. Long-widowed, a single passion remained:  Watching the birds that flocked to her Vallecito home.

Her mistake seemed innocent except when considered in retrospect. While stocking certain bird feeders, she began substituting small bits of pork chop instead of the recommended suet. “I think this will be a nice change of pace for my little friends,” Mrs. Yakamora said to no one in particular.  She often engaged in lively banter with no one in particular.

Pork chop in any form is not recommended for bird feeding.

She first saw the vultures, an inquisitive pair that she tolerantly chose to name Judy and Punch, on a Tuesday afternoon. But by Wednesday dozens hovered in the increasingly fetid air. Several perched aggressively in her desert willows. “There’s too many,” Mrs. Yakamora said, before making a second mistake of getting a broom and attempting to shoo them.

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 She became frightened when a cadre of the scavengers, only slightly smaller than condors, began circling very low, hissing, and chasing her about. A particularly vicious one caused her to trip and fall. When she noticed several pieces of decaying pork chop protruding from its beak, she couldn’t suppress a scream.  This sound bred of fear must have provoked the creature still further. Only barely did she manage to pick herself up and scurry back into her kitchen.  Mrs. Yakamora couldn’t help wondering if she’d been vulture-nipped as she reflectively sipped a cup of her favorite jasmine. She chose that moment to call Matt Lockard at his office far away in Ventura.  “Matt,” she managed, “it’s Tumera Yakamora.”

He had no idea what had been happening on the other end of the phone line when he said, “How’s the birding going? See any odd species lately?”

She began sobbing before she mentioned Judy or Punch.

“I saw a blue jay in my yard yesterday,” he said, “first one in a while.”

“Matt stop!” she shrieked, “I got vultures!”

“That’s okay,” he said without missing a beat, “You still have Medigap.”

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Centenarian David R. Morse’s family should have seen the birthday cake disaster coming. When Great-great-grandfather Morse tried blowing out all the candles on his birthday cake, the result was predictable. If it wasn’t for a California Health Insurance agent, it could have been financially tragic for his family as well.

He lived with his extended family instead of in a rest home. It was a big family living in a big house. Grandpa-pa-pa as he was known to all was loved and revered. Although he hated celebrating his own birthday once he’d attained his late nineties, his annual party had become a family tradition, and Grandpa-pa-pa Morse reluctantly went along. The worst part was blowing out his candles with a single exhaled breath, a perfectly timed gust expelled from his increasingly frail frame that could put out all the candles at once so that he might “get his wish.” Last year at age 102 he’d wished for an end to this ordeal, but secretly of course, so as not to disappoint his younger kin. This year, the massive cake, with papaya-flavored frosting, was decorated with 103 candles, each like a tiny universe flickering. “Blow Grandpa-pa-pa,” shrieked eight-year-old Adam, already a little windbag who’d easily blown out his own candles, all eight of them, just two weeks before. The family’s beloved centenarian was gathering his remaining breath in a mighty storm at that very moment, but the task before him seemed immense. Could he still do it? Grand-pa-pa Morse huffed …. And blew with all the might he had. The result was strange. Instead of going out, the 103 candles suddenly blazed as one! Everyone in the room, a gaggle of Morses, gasped. Grandpa-pa-pa not only gasped, but began wheezing. “That’s never happened before!” exclaimed Mossy Morse, his family-values smitten granddaughter, age fifty-six, who already had grandchildren of her own, of which Adam was one. By the time Mossy’s husband Alexander realized there was an emergency, he’d begun putting the cake out with a nearby extinguisher. Adam screamed, “Grandpa-pa-pa!” when the boy saw their patriarch keel over. Moments later, they were all in the emergency room of a nearby facility, as Grandpa-pa-pa Morse was receiving urgent care.

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Mossy Morse said out loud what most of the clan had been thinking. “Thank goodness we anticipated this when we purchased a policy for our beloved grandpa-pa-pa from that friendly California Health Insurance agent we met on the pier at Santa Monica,” she said.

“Will Grandpa-pa-pa be able to blow out his candles next year?” asked Adam with a touch of naiveté. All Adam got for asking the question was a big hug from everybody – including his now reinvigorated grandpa-pa-pa.

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Health Insurance Helps in Car Crash

Leonard Durban was proud of his brand new Saab. It was chartreuse with a gold trim. It had no flaw or blemish. While shopping one fine sunny day, he’d purchased his groceries two bags full and was preparing to exit the parking lot of Nice Foods where natural foods were sold.

His Saab was stopped. But another car, a 1965 Studebaker which was the color of phlegm had approached from within the parking lot as Leonard looked on with horror. The driver, one Agnes L. Penta, an irascible 94-year-old, was practiced in cutting corners as she approached stop signs. She’d been driving this way for what seemed like an eternity at least for any traffic she unfortunately encountered. As far as she was concerned, Leonard’s brand new Saab had no right to be where it was. Even its right to exist was questionable in her murky mind.

“I always stop at the stop sign when I shop at Nice Foods,” she toldthe police officer called to the scene, “I can’t help it if he was in my way. He hit my car. I had the right of way.”

Leonard had tensed his muscles when he saw the phlegm-colored Studebaker approach, and impact triggered a generalized pain almost immediately. But within minutes as Leonard’s sad Saab story was ending, he recalled California health insurance agent Matt Lockard and he managed a weak smile.

“You stupid ninny. Why are you smiling like a jackass?” Agnes screamed at Leonard while flashing what could only be described as her characteristic reptilian grin. At that precise instant, all Leonard could produce in response was an agonizing grimace accomplished while smiling because he now knew it annoyed the vicious woman.

When the phlegm-colored Studebaker and its despicable driver had begun to recede into Leonard’s memory, and after he’d been treated to alleviate the neck and back spasms caused by the accident, a more pleasant interlude occurred. Leonard found himself inside the office of California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard.

“You’re completely covered,” Matt said, “and your auto insurance covered the damage to your Saab. It’s fixed good as new. But that elderly driver …”

“I don’t blame her,” asserted Leonard, “Life’s too short.”

“Not for the woman who hit you,” replied Matt. “She’d take any moment she gets, and yours too.”

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Sixty-seven-year-old Evelyn Saguaro had the same problem her late mother had once been afflicted with. Besides her real gall bladder, she’d been born with a vestigial secondary one in which three cactus-like gallstones, each about the size of a quarter, had formed. Late in life, the vestigial gall bladder’s gallstones were starting to act up. Sharp pains would erupt beneath her breastbone immediately after she ate even a tiny serving of anything, and the acute pain made her sick to her stomach. When her doctor ordered tests to identify where the symptoms were originating from, he told Evelyn that her Medicare Plan only covered her original gall bladder, and since the stones had formed in the vestigial one, any procedure to remove them in “her unique case” would not be reimbursed. Her primary care physician kidded with her. “I suggest you refrain from eating,” he said. “Are you serious?” she asked. “No, a better idea might be to seek out a California Health Insurance agent.”

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That’s when she realized that she had done just that, two years previously. Was her Medigaps supplemental still in force? She headed on a beeline to the Visalia office where she’d purchased the Medigap coverage. Was the office still there? It was. The same agent, Glenda, was at her familiar desk. During their previous conversation which she’d somehow forgotten, Glenda had shared with her that she too had a “vestigial gall bladder,” with its associated symptomology not yet evident. Glenda had even belonged to an online organization, a regular support group called VGB Sufferers International.”

“Glenda, I’m so glad to see you,” Evelyn began. “Is my Medigaps policy still in effect?”

“Why wouldn’t it be, dear? Let me check.”

Evelyn waited expectantly. Suddenly her gallstone pain returned with a vengeance. “Is it? She asked, almost gasping.

“Of course it is, my dear Mrs. Saguaro.” A month later, Evelyn’s surgery was successful and her cacti-shaped stones were displayed on her mantle, and on the VGB Sufferers website as a digital photo – for all to see.

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