Gap insurance

When you're screaming up on 40, the first indications that you may not be a super hero emerge, and you thank the Lord Almighty you lived to appreciate this discovery.  You lose the desire, no, you recoil at the notion, of leaping buildings or running with bulls or playing chicken behind the wheel of 400 horses (or in the swimming pool, for that matter).  Yes, you are a chicken, and proud of it.

So....you buy insurance.  You purchase coverage to save what precious viability you have remaining, because you're too tired to attempt amassing you're heaping pile of....well, let's just say "treasures"...again.  A freak flood or 60-mph encounter with a 21-year-old at 5:00 am (as you drive to work and they are weaving their way to bed), and you must reconcile it's either the homeless shelter, a beat up 2002 Impala....or, insurance.

Paying premiums is a sure sign of conceding defeat-an acknowledgment of impending disaster-but, an attempt to hedge your bets that someone else will pay for it.  Just when you've taken a deep breath, and your health, life, disability, mortgage, collision and comprehensive policies have protected you and yours from most conceivable forms of untimely death, maiming, disease and accident, and the inner sanctum of your mind is practically swaying in a hammock to the rhythm of the gentle breeze of your underwriters, you discover gap insurance, which, in essence, is insurance for your insurance.

Walking into an auto dealership is like stumbling into Chalmun's Cantina to speak to the Wizard of Oz.  The salesmen are like a bunch of Wookies who can't answer any specific questions regarding money, so, they scurry off to the "Wizard" for any pricing, financing or term adjustments in hope that the average person will tire of waiting out this ridiculous Wimbledon of negotiations.  Should you be fortunate enough to determine a value on the vehicle you wish to buy and sign the dotted line, as soon as you drive through the invisible bubble of "Oz" to drive down the yellow brick road, you're ride is no longer worth what it was 2 seconds before.  Thus, the "gap."   

At least our homes are a reliable, appreciating investment due to the fact that the banks can accurately assess value and protect against risk.........right?  Okay, let's take Lehman and Franny and JP Morgan and S&P out the mental leap here and recognize that the need for gap insurance has always existed for a home with a child resident.  If nothing else, a child, and especially children, will cause a home to depreciate more quickly than a Kia.

I flashback to the day when attempting to intercept the kids from carving their initials into my dining room table.  My voice dropped a full octave while some of my father's most legendary words belted out of me with such ease and familiarity:  "Why can't we have anything nice?"

On one such occasion, my three siblings and myself were spinning in a vacuum of frenzy, drunk on exposure to our cousins, which resulted in dislodging brand new closet doors in the master bedroom.  I don't even know why we had the audacity to enter the hallowed space, but once discovered, we promptly learned we had "crossed the line."

Our kids depreciate their bathroom on a daily basis.  We fear that one day the tub will give way from the rot that must permeate the sub-floor due to the fact that bath time is just a smokescreen for the pursuit of Moby Dick himself.  They like to slide down the back of the tub, plunging into water that is then sent sloshing from side to side, spilling and spitting water over the edge like an intermittent cascade.

They try to sneak scooters into the house, like the rumble of Razor NASCAR on the hardwood floors would escape my attention.  They have sprayed water into the house with the garden hose.  Our screen door was breached, and what started as a tiny hole in the grid became an opened flap that we all eventually took to walking through rather than bothering to open and close it.

Of course, the damage is not limited to the house, it includes all things we value and they don't.  (Again, the "gap.")  Boring things like mini-van paint, upholstered furniture, wood furniture, metal and glass furniture, musical instruments, clothing,...you get the point.

My husband says when each of the children set up house and, hopefully, invite us over for that first dinner, he will stab a steak knife into their dining room table.  I laugh at the fantasy and defer to reality, "No you wouldn't," I say.  I pause at his silence and the crazed look in his eyes.  Maybe they will have gap insurance by then....