Dave Barry - Bad Habits

$42.13 worth of U.S. postage stamps that we bought only recently but cannot use because the Postal Commission raises the rate every two or three days. $3,024.56 worth of aquarium supplies, from when my wife and I went through our Tropical Fish Phase, which culminated in our discovery that they are called “tropical” fish because they can survive only in the tropics, which we do not live in. A pure-bred German shepherd dog for which we paid $300, or roughly $50 per brain cell. $80 worth of rolls of undeveloped photographic film, which we don’t want to have developed because we can’t remember whether they contain any memorable pictures, but which we don’t want to throw away in case they contain any memorable pictures. We’ve had these rolls for years now, and we often take them off the shelf and settle down in front of a crackling fire to look at them and reminisce. “Remember this roll of film?” we say. $200 worth of random keys.

Your only remaining financial responsibility is to balance your checkbook. Every month, you send out a batch of checks to various people, and every month the bank gets hold of these checks somehow, smears them with bank-style graffiti, and sends them back to you. The obvious question, of course, is, What are you supposed to do with them? My wife ignores them. She merely tosses the bank envelope, unopened, into a drawer, and walks away, laughing a carefree laugh. So far, she has gotten away with it, but I’m fairly sure that someday the Bank Inspector will show up with guns and attack dogs and make her stay in her room until she balances her checkbook. So I always balance mine. Here’s the system I use:

1. On a large, flat surface, such as a washing machine or floor, arrange all the checks in a tasteful, numerical pattern.

2. With a sharp pencil, put little check marks next to all the numbers on the bank statement and all the numbers in your checkbook.

That’s all there is to it. You could avoid even this much work if you could prevent the bank from getting hold of your checks and sending them back to you. One way to do this would be to write, in large letters at the top of each check, the words DO NOT LET THE BANK GET HOLD OF THIS CHECK. If everybody did this, we would all save thousands of hours we now waste balancing checkbooks, and we would probably have come up with a cure for the common cold by now.

I have been under almost constant attack by life-insurance salesmen for most of my adult life. I was first attacked when I was in college, by this guy named Charlie. One day he was a normal college student, no different from the rest of us, and the next day he was a life-insurance salesman. It was as if the Moonies had got him. All of a sudden, he was wearing wing-tipped shoes and acting very concerned about my Financial Security. At the time, my idea of Financial Security was to have enough money to buy a pizza with extra cheese, but Charlie thought I should have at least six hundred thousand dollars’ worth of life insurance, so that when I died my dependents would be rich.

To be honest, I didn’t care what happened to my dependents, because I didn’t have any. But Charlie was obsessed with my dependents: he’d sit in my room, hour after hour, and fret about them, until finally, to ease his mind, I bought some life insurance, and he went away. As soon as I was safely in another state, I cashed in my insurance and used the money to go sailing in the Virgin Islands with some friends who had not had the foresight to buy life insurance for their dependents, and thus had a more difficult time coming up with the money. So my life insurance turned out to be a good investment.

All life-insurance salesmen believe that no matter who you are, or what your financial situation is, you need more insurance. So unless you wear elaborate disguises and sleep in old refrigerator cartons, sooner or later a life-insurance salesman will come to your home, calling you by your first name a lot and subtly hinting that you’re going to die. Suppose your name is John. Here’s how your insurance salesman will attack you:

INSURANCE SALESMAN: John, I just stopped by to chat about your Financial Security. John, our records indicate that you’re going to die someday and leave your dependents penniless and they’ll end up out on the street eating garbage in the cold. I just thought we should chat about that, John. YOU: Well, I certainly appreciate it, but I already have eight million dollars’ worth of life insurance, and my only dependents are these tropical fish.

INSURANCE SALESMAN: Frankly, John, in these inflationary times, eight million dollars just isn’t going to buy all that much tropical-fish food. And I’m not even talking about the cost of fish-tank filters, John. YOU: But they’re just fish, for God’s sake. I just can’t see buying more insurance for fish. But thanks anyway.

INSURANCE SALESMAN: John, not long ago I was sitting in a room just like this, talking with a man, just like you, who thought he didn’t need more insurance. I left his house, and the next day he was struck by lightning and run over by a bulldozer and his body was eaten by ants, and within a matter of days his fish had all developed fin rot, all because he didn’t think he needed more insurance. So, John, if I were to leave your house tonight and something like that were to happen to you, I’d never forgive myself. So I’ll just unroll my sleeping bag here and cook some freeze-dried food, of which I have a three-week supply, while you think about it, John. And another thing, John. John John John John John.

Finally, of course, you will buy insurance. As the salesman leaves, he will put a secret mark on the door to alert other insurance salesmen that yours is a good house to stop at, and soon they will be at your door in droves. If you want them to go away, either you have to shoot them, which is illegal in some states and which doesn’t always work anyway, or you have to buy more insurance.

So the only real solution to the problem is to convince the salesman that you are a bad risk. Put a sign outside your house that says: CAUTION: RADIOACTIVE RABID LEPROSY VICTIM WITH SMALLPOX. This won’t stop a really successful salesman from entering, but it will slow him down. When he knocks on the door, hide in the bedroom and have a friend, wearing a surgical mask, escort him into the living room. Then follow this script:

INSURANCE SALESMAN: Is John home?

YOUR FRIEND: Yes, but I think he’s dead. Let me check. John? Are you dead? YOU: Not yet. Who is it?

YOUR FRIEND: A visitor. YOU: Oh, goody. Send him in. I haven’t had a visitor since poor old Wesley Bumpers came to see me last week. Speaking of whom, I wish you’d get him out of here. He’s beginning to spoil.

INSURANCE SALESMAN: Perhaps I’ve picked a bad time. YOU: Not at all. Come on in. (Here you cough violently, and toss a bucket of giblets into the living room.)

INSURANCE SALESMAN: I just realized I’m late for an important appointment in Belgium. I’ll stop by later. (Holding his breath, he barges out the door.)

If this approach doesn’t work, you should try vicious dogs.

You young couples out there who dream of having your own houses someday have probably read a lot of depressing articles about housing costs. You know:

WASHINGTON—The American Institute of People who Keep Track of These Things released a study today showing that by 1990 the average single-family house will cost eleven million dollars, not counting drapes, and that the only people who will be able to afford houses will be members of the Saudi Arabian royal family and major drug dealers.

Well, cheer up, young couples: You can have your own house. All you need is a large sum of money. The best source of money is your parents. You can get almost anything you want from your parents, provided you’re not afraid to whine. I remember when I was twelve and really needed a BB gun. My parents didn’t want me to have one, on the grounds I might shoot my brother. But I put together a string of about thirty-five days during which I was without question the most sniveling, obnoxious child in the entire world. It got to the point where, to preserve their sanity, my parents had to either give me a BB gun or hire someone to kidnap me. They eventually elected to buy me a BB gun, mainly because it was cheaper. I was so grateful I didn’t shoot my brother for three or four days.