Insurance

It is of the automobile and homeowner's variety that I type. A couple of weeks ago, I answered the phone and it was Dorothy, my insurance lady. I met with her, and now that she is representing a different company, she saved me a whole bunch of money. Around five hundred bucks a year! I was happy. I wrote her a check. A little over a week later, she called again. She had mailed the check I gave her to her boss in another town, and it had not yet surfaced. I checked my bank account online to see if someone else had grabbed the check, managed to cash it, and ran. Nope. Check number 9292 had not gone through the bank. Dorothy asked me to give her another check. I said, well, if you're willing to pay the twenty-nine bucks to stop payment on the first one. She hesitated, and thought maybe we should wait a couple more days. Then she called again and made the same request, in the meantime I had called my bank and asked what my responsibility is in this particular situation. He suggested what I had, for Dorothy to pay the stop payment fee if she wanted another check. He also suggested I wait a full ten business days for the check to arrive at its destination, snail mail being what it is, meaning two weeks. I explained what my bank had recommended, and she relented and said she would pay the fee if the check had not surfaced after ten business days. Friday she called again and was overjoyed to report that the damaged envelope containing my check had been returned to her and that she would send it on to her boss. I didn't ask her if she had neglected to put a stamp on it. Despite the annoyance, it was still worth saving five hundred bucks. On a completely different take on the word insurance, I saw a man in the waiting room at the clinic last week. He was wearing both a belt and suspenders. It's not like he was wearing clown pants that were in danger of slipping off at any moment, they were normal fitting pants. Extra security or bad fashion statement? You decide. I'm busy trying to figure out what to do with this extra five hundred bucks. Maybe I'll buy some suspenders...