ilyĀIMY

I don’t like the notion of an “insurance adjuster”. I’m sure there’s a logical and maybe even benign reason for them being called that, but it sure always FEELS like they’re the person responsible for “adjusting” what you’re going to receive for your years of payments, and that that’s NEVER what you’d agreed to when you signed up.

Rowan’s house got smacked by a tree during the windstorms last week and its horrendous. Friday afternoon a tree opened their second story to the sky scaring the Hell out of the whole family. It took till Monday to get a crane there to get the tree off the roof, but work can’t start till the insurance adjuster comes and they couldn’t make it till today (a full week later) and the rains came down on Tuesday…

And so their Life is on pause until their home is sorted out. Only it’s NOT on pause, is it? The kid’s still got to go to school, the grownups still have to work. Except in the meantime they don’t have a secure, safe, sound base of operations. In the words of their kid, their house is “broken”.

Natural catastrophes are inherently bad dice rolls. Critical fails of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s like the Earth’s way of reminding you that Life is inherently unfair and that you are a tiny organism, helpless in the face of wind and rain and heat and cold and that when it really comes to it, a mudslide can swat you from the planet just as easily as a bullet.

And so we’ve created artificial ways of dodging the odds, and failing that, of being “made whole” when we roll that critical fail.

And so it sucks that a tree fell on their house. And it’s unfair – but it’s kind of, the “built in” unfairness of the universe. To then have that additional unfairness of the humans that you’ve paid to get the scales evened back up again take their time about it, decide that “whole” isn’t “100%” but some “adjusted” percentage thereof… that’s unfairness augmented by callousness and capitalism.

Or maybe the adjuster will come and say “don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of your house, put a brand new roof on, remove the tree, give you a place to Live in the meantime… we’re here for you” – but my experience with insurance is much more along the lines of “no, we just collect the fees… here’s the red tape you’ve paid for… now fix shit up with it.”