My insurance agent wants me alive

I wasn't entirely surprised that the first card I received for my birthday this year came from my insurance agent. My life insurance agent. Among other things in the card, he wished my a "long and healthy life." Thankfully, he avoided adding the more honest, "so my coworkers don't have to spend months searching for policy loopholes to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to your heirs."

Still, it's a good thing that he hasn't started stalking me, because if he did he would have found me and the family shoehorned into a burger joint -- an Irish burger joint at that -- consuming a large, greasy cheeseburger, a heaping plate of fries and, pity poor me, a sizable portion of The Boy's fries, too.

My birthdays are usually spent seeking out good burgers, and unfortunately these burgers are always served in complete dumps that are terribly small yet ridiculously popular. This place was no exception. It had two seats and about 500 customers, all of them jammed in the doorway, blocking my way inside.

Better yet, this one bragged that it provided "lousy service" and included a sign saying, "the customer is always wrong." I was fully prepared to take the abuse, however, because I'll endure just about anything -- crowds, long waits, spilled beer, strange dinner companions, an inpatient preschooler singing loudly of "poopy" -- to get me a good burger.

When we were finished, I rolled home and consumed cake. Ice cream cake. Then, for my gifts, The Wife kindly gave me a bottle of Lipitor and a defibrillator. A better gift might have been a picture of the look on my insurance agent's face upon reading my evening menu because if I'm going to die of a heart attack I at least want to see something funny as I go.

If you're like me, then birthdays are just another excuse to eat like a pig. Come to think of it, so is every other holiday, birthday, camping trip, vacation, bar mitzvah, random visits to neighbors' homes, business trips to Virginia, etc. I'd say that, in a given year, there are about seven days in which I eat normally.

And every time I comfort myself with this thought: I won't do this again for another year. Never mind all those other times I eat like a pig throughout the year. Say, for instance, when The Wife goes to Vegas.

So instead of a birthday card, perhaps my life insurance guy would be better off sending me a treadmill or a gym membership or my own home angioplasty kit. Or maybe his cards should include pictures of clogged arteries or simply a big pile of dead people. Because then I'd lose my appetite and my evening food-fest would be much less fattening.

And then Mr. Life Insurance Agent would accomplish his goal of keeping me alive.




Chances are you won't find my life insurance agent at humor-blogs.com. But it would be funny if you did.