A higher form of insurance....'Div approaches the harbor.

"He's rather well thought of in his field Lewis...."

"Insurance?"

"S#it....."

-Exchange between John Voight and Burt Reynolds in the movie Deliverance

Official summer on the third coast is officially drawing rapidly to an end. Next week the kids return to school. The park and the Island, in fact almost the entire Laguna Madre area are already semi deserted thanks to the knee-jerk reactionism of the local and state officials in the face of what they thought might be a close call, if not direct hit by Hurricane Dean, which finally made it’s second semi-benign landfall almost four hundred miles south of us. Our esteemed County officials along with local government declared a state of emergency when the storm was still almost two thousand miles out in the Atlantic. Evacuated everybody until the coast was clear. Manditorillay. And now it is, for sure....

Everyone is still edgy and nervous after the chingaso that Katrina became. As always, political types lack analytic skills, and even in retrospect do not understand that the problems that New Orleans had were mainly due to the ineffectual and bumbling non-oversight by only a couple of key individuals in governing positions….

Don’t get me started.

This morning I attended a mandatory meeting as a phony-baloney administrator, along with the rest of our little island workforce, presented by supplemental insurance salespeople. As always, it was both an inspiring and depressing experience.

Hawking heart attack, stroke and cancer policies, much in the same vein as drug dealers would hawk crack, crank or smack, we were bombarded by the usual statistics. You know, one in two men will be diagnosed - we pay the first three thousand dollars - what happens if you suffer a stroke? scenarios. And as usual, I started examining these potentials in my own mind. Now, I’m not usually a maudlin or gloomy person, but I was struck with the odd symmetry of it all, and it turned my mood dark and somber. It was not the first time, and I don’t reckon that it’ll be the last.

Just outside the big picture window in the rec hall, there in the sand on the very edge of South Padre Island, across the channel was a sailboat on the hook over in Dolphin Cove, waiting for the Gulf to calm down just a bit more before it headed out to someplace away from here. The day is beautiful, and there is a hint of a west wind in the air, carrying the promise of days that will soon be shortening and cooling, tropical nights scented with frangipani and salt spray. The water is blue, and dolphin are leaping and playing with apparent abandon in Brazos Santiago Pass.

Insurance.

Yep, we bet against ourselves every day. Can’t afford it…..but can’t afford to be without it. And what insurance against ourselves is there in life? What policy can I buy that will guarantee me happiness, or at the very least contentment and satisfaction for every moment that I draw a breath? And what’s the cost?

Because that’s the policy that I want.