March 8, 2016
Notable Stats
Misdirected Outrage Arc (MOA) – The range of outrage spread on a cause that has no bearing whatsoever to what is relevant to a parent. Measured in imaginary friends.
Indignant Reaction Time (IRT) – The time it takes a child to respond with pure offense after you have just begun to explain something. National average – 1 second.
I had forgotten that in a moment of over-explaining something to my son, I had delved into the vortex of breaking down the nuances of car insurance. Initially, I had a point. I was trying to get into the purpose of insurance on his 7th birthday to share the idea of risk-reward. But as things can devolve with our son as he games the conversation to express his natural revolutionary tendencies, the point was expectedly missed, but I underestimated by how far a margin.
Instead of locking in on the idea of protecting your family, your home, your car, your health, and other (what I would boldly declare “valuable and priceless” parts of our lives), through responsibility, forward thinking and the good fortune of having the means to do so, he locked in on the idea that car insurance is more costly for boys than girls.
He saw it as a conspiracy, and complete breach against the America he is coming to know. Freedom, equity, and the liberty to drive, even if driving means pedaling a foot scooter in the driveway.
How could an insurance company discriminate so brazenly? His sisters were girls and why should they pay less or, in actual Earthly reality, Mom and Dad pay less to insure their driving?
Eventually, as the conversation was headed in a direction that was ensuring his complete irreverence to all things DMV, I was forced to explain using real scenarios of decisions and actions. Actions that involved his aforementioned sisters and our son.
I told him that I understood more and more why insurance companies make this distinction, as discriminatory as he may think it is… I prefered to break it down by listing rhetorical questions. Rhetorical to me, and to most parents, I would dare guess. These questions, I posed to him in one form or another. They all began with the following phrase.
“Comparing your actions to your sister’s, who did the following?”
- In a self-imagined and invented bike race with a 5-year-old girl, this person ran her off the road, leading her to scrape multiple body parts in a vicious crash because he “thought she was going to win.”
- By the grace of divine intervention, I walked over to the top of the stairs to find this person about to use a cardboard box as a sled. The landing spot? Concrete flooring.
- In a neighborhood July 4th fair, this person rode his bike so close to the escorting fire truck that he could hold on to the back of it. In the end, he declared victory, marking the first person in history to win an escorted, non-competitive, bike stroll with the firetruck never breaking 1 MPH.
- After baiting his Mom to chase him in the town center, he ran at full speed while facing backwards long enough to run into a pillar the size of the leg of a brachiosaurus.
- In a wayward and unauthorized attempt to cut a hole out of a cardboard box, he elected to use a kitchen knife the size of his leg.
- In an act of Houdini-like instincts, he demanded that his sister zip him up inside a suitcase only to eventually realize he is afraid of the dark, had little air, and could not get out.
- This person boycotted listening to his parents at the age of 18 months, when they evilly stopped him from crossing a major Chicago street while in a battery-powered kiddie car with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a sippy cup.
I had to remind him that he has received the equivalent of his license being revoked for two decades already. He has also collected a number of moving violations to add points to his already uninsurable self. This included:
- Riding against traffic
- Driving blindfolded
- Driving while standing, facing backwards, and taunting his sister (all at the same time)
- Reckless driving
- Ignoring signage
- Speeding
- Property Damage
- Personal injury
So I tried to explain that a person who takes such risks, which therefore means risks for others in his range, is going to cost a lot more money to insure than say, the person who follows the street laws. I encouraged him to keep at it, learn to follow more rules, be safer, and then one day when he is 30, he can take a driver’s test. Until then, we will need a second and third mortgage to pay for his insurance and, despite his argument, I think it is fair.
- Doug Glanville
