Privileged

So, if you are lucky enough to have a job that lets you out before 5 p.m. consistently and also to have your own vehicle, battered as it is, you might also be the kind of person who plays by the rules, which are expensive, because you believe it is the right thing to do and because you fear financial insolvency and choose to cover your backside.

Why does insurance never come through kindly, despite faithful biannual payments, year after year, and a lack of claims?

*(There was the one time I slid in the rain and created equal damage to two cars, mine and hers, hers being stopped in the rain at a flashing yellow light, when there was only a faux intersection present, created by a high school parking lot. The suburbs can be annoying. It was determined my fault, but since then, nada.)

Back then, over a decade ago, I recall paying maybe $800 to get my car "repaired." To this day it still is deformed in the front, though I must say the Volvo-esque bumper on that 1991 Camry has proven much more substantial than the 1998 Corolla's, which succumbed to a steel Ford pick-up's backside on Friday.

It was raining, and I wasn't the driver. It was in a city setting, 31st Street, west of Main. Urban settings can be tense.

Someone from another country made the choice to trust a panel-truck driver's wave and drove into oncoming traffic, the first member of which was mi esposo in the Corolla. This one is supposedly falling toward Mr. J.J.'s fault; he and his interpretive son were at the station on Saturday when we showed up to file the report. I thought that was kind of interesting. His daughters are cute, and, incidentally, they live in Northeast.

It has been nothing but tedium ever since.

We are grateful that the other driver was uninjured and insured. We're not injured either, except in frustration and that itchy sting of pride when "fate" seems to be indifferently vomitting all over anything like plans or personal progress.

House?

Very funny.

At least we're not being literally thrown up on; that privilege is reserved for my child-rearing friends. Ganbate!

You may know that I played bad girl on Tax Free Weekend and got a silly Mac Book.

This fell recently upon the heels of our buying a new Dell-something-or-other to replace the fried out former tower, etc. with which art is made, etc.

So, a certain insurance company I won't name, the one that raised my rates back then and put me into the "indemnity" class of customers, is yet again proving to be unhelpful. They are stupidly unable to contact the other insurance company, which I had never heard of but which must have bilingual services.

Saturday was spent getting half-answers from "our people" and instructions to contact the other's insurance company.

I'm sure the rules of what to do when you are in a crash are written somewhere. Are they sent with the insurance welcome packet or are they in the state driving law manuals?

I haven't been in the loser-customer category for years, by the way, but perhaps I should be, if intelligence is any qualification. It's like they are just doing whatever they want, since you don't know what they should be doing. It's like uniformed people signing crap mortgages. Vultures.

Today, they are still calling the wrong phone number (not the cells) searching around for the other adjuster's contact information, and for some other reason I can't quite determine, my partner in financial crime can't make certain ends meet in the convoluted systematic (thoroughly culturally-determined) chain of obligations, rights, conclusions.

It's like we're guessing our way through a foreign language, and though well-steeped in American, we feel a little in the dark.

They're saying something frightening, like: "permission to tear your car down."

!

What kind of morbid, unhopeful statement is that?

How come a friend of mine can get a decent insurance check for a beat-up, early-model Japanese other-car with engine issues out of the cell-phone talker who rammed into the trunk, while our equally (formerly?) useful most-popular Japanese car is hearing whispers of its imminent demise?

I looked up the Kelly Blue Book price, and even a crummy one from our year should be worth at least $3,000. I mean, engine, $1,000, body front/body side, $2,000 . . . right?

Am I incredibly naive or just in denial?

I don't think it matters what stupid company you pay to be compliant. All of them can decide at their loss-calculating whim that you can't have your car back.

No one has said the word "totalled," yet.

I just paid them August 1st.

I wonder if we'll get a refund.

I don't have any photos, which is probably well-enough. I hope they put our stuff in a box for us. I don't want to comb the body for personal effects. There was a lot of crap in that car, namely painting equipment.

At least we didn't fall off a bridge into the Mississippi.