Medically speaking

So anyway I had to create clients on my computer system to test insurance docutmentation on. I had to create someone to be my fuel-injected guinea pig. Ideally a family orientated person who’s going to have to be a multimillionaire to afford all the cover and brokerage fees they’re going to get whether ornot they want it.

So I reach into non-existence like a small, nice smelling god, and I pull forth my principle client.

She is a female. As she’s often are. (Originally she was going to be a man but I only had a female ID number so her parents were rather confused at the sudden sex change. It’s never easy on the folks.)

* Her name is Macaroni cheese. ( Her parents were hippies and all the weed and crystal meths had insured whatever name she got would be a lame one. It caused her a lot of trouble in high school but luckily she made the cheerleading team and there was a guy named Eustace to take some of the heat as well, I mean what do parents think naming their kids? Or small computer godlings either for that matter?)

* She is a butcher (Originally she was to be a stewardess but the optionsfor work descriptions were long and windy and I didn’t feel like scrolling all the way to S. Butcher she is.)

* and earns R20 000 a month. (Which gives me the uncomfortable feeling that she might dabble in some nepherious things that only butchers with the right dismembering and mincing equipment could be in!)

* She is married to Vegan Cheese who has is chronically lactose intolerant. (They tried to hide this on medical reports to keep the insurance down, but I’m good at my job and they eventually relented and gave a full medical report. At least I didn't mention his unfortunate rash...)

* Vegan is a rabbi. (very devout and his only regret is rabbi’s don’t have choir boys.)

* He moonlights as a Mortitian. (He currently get’s no earnings for it, it’s really more of a hobby)

* He earns R5000 a month (With his wife earning so much more,we suspect he might be a henpecked husband. We asked him but he had to go get his wife’s permission to answer first and then just never came back)

* They have two twins, a boy (Gouda Cheese – a red haired rambunctious kid. Which is odd as neither of his parents have red hair. The post man does though…) and girl (Bree cheese – dark hair and the spitting image of her mother in that she too likes sharp weapons and dead things.)

* Both kids will, for insurance purposes, have to come down with many weird and costly diseases. Which to cripple? Which to blind? The world of insurance can be a cruel one!

* They live in a four room house. (It’s in a good part of town. You have to have money to live there. After all the insurance policies they’re getting, they will have to move.)

* They have a pet dog. (He’s so cute I’ve decided not to give him rabies)

* They have two cars. (There used to be a third but an unfortunate accident involving alcohol, speeding and a mime scrapped that car and upped their premiums.)

* The first car is a porche. (This is owned by our dubious butcher principle client Macaroni – she likes the feeling of the wind in her hair and bugs in her teeth. Her husband borrowed it once and made a show of driving around all the churches in the area in a way that could be only described as 'mockingly'.)

* The second car is a hearse. (Because the porche is too small, the kids have to ride in the hearse at the back. They like to lie down and stretch their arms up to the windows, making clawing motions and watching other cars swerve suddenly away from them. Sometimes there is a body in there as well but Vegan tried not to bring his work home.)

* The family is very healthy. This is a momentary thing)

* The Cheese family is well off, they are content and life is rosy.

Now they will be truly tested! Medical insurance after insurance policy will be created. What family secrets will be relieved? Will they learn that Macaroni still smokes on the sly? How Vegan cheese got that nasty STD at Rabbi camp? How the kids are such liabilities that Macaroni and Vegan invest in a large chain saw – just in case?

Will the family survive these tests and turmoil? Will they be able to hold together or will they fall apart, as each medical insurance taken out reviles more uncomfortable, and frankly rather unbelievable, truths?

But now I must go off and do my testing. Work work work! And since that’s part of my job and therefore, quite confidential, you'll just have to spend the rest of your life wondering. Kind of like the Cheese family is going to be doing!

Pineapple blues

So anyway, it started as a day like any other day, the sun came up, the day dawned and velociraptors chirped from the treetops.

I was at my work station, a half smoked cigarette dangling from my lips (which, since I don’t smoke, was vaguely disturbing).

I was tapping away at my keyboard. Then I turned the machine on and it worked even better.

I was tired. I’d worked hard at doing nothing and felt I deserved a little something as a reward. After stealing my boss’s paperweight I decided even that wasn’t enough and that a delicious pineapple would go down just right. Especially if I cut it up first, not like last time.

I went upstairs to the cafeteria. Then I remembered it was downstairs.

The cafeteria was amazing. It served everything, even fish. The ones in the aquarium were always happy with the attention. Today’s special was advertized as bean soup. The smell coming from the bathrooms I went by confirmed it was.

I walk into the cafeteria. After rubbing my nose, I decide it would be easier to go through the door.

I start loading my plate up with goodies, mostly wallets and watches and anything else I can pry off people when they’re not looking.

I got to the serving counter and with a smooth and graceful demur asked, “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUR FREAKING PINEAPPLES?!?!?!”

The lady responded in an odd voice, probably caused by my choke hold, “We only had one and that gentleman there has it!”

I turned to see a man sitting in the middle of the room, a knife (Not as big as my pocket machete but still pretty mean looking) pointed at the side of a pineapple that he was holding, gibbering wildly to himself like I do when the voices start up.

He was going on something about being stalked by an ex lover, how he couldn’t take it, how life was cruel and something else or other, I was too busy focusing on the pineapple. People go through hell all the time but a perfect pineapple is hard to find.

And it was a perfect pineapple, just the right shade of orangy-yellow, with firm flesh and a magnificent leafy green top spattered just lightly with the blood of whomever the mad man had wrenched the fruit from.

It was beautiful!

I had to have it!

I looked at the pain in the man’s eyes. His life was obviously completely off the rails, the obsessed ex had driven him utterly crazy.

He didn’t deserve that pineapple, he’d probably not even taste it as it went down.

I had to act!

I slid up to his table, mostly because I didn’t see that banana peel.

He was telling his friends about his woes. The fact that they were all invisible didn’t faze him.

I sat down opposite him. The spittle spray made me move another seat over.

“Sounds like you’re suffering my friend” I said, reaching out a comforting arm to the pineapple.

The man looked at me through blood shot eyes. He then put the eyes down and looked at me normally.

“Yeah” he said descriptively.

“I can’t believe she did that to you, man” I said sympathetically, “I never knew she was capable of it!”

“I know!” he yelled, “she won’t leave me be! I can’t get on with my life! I just want to move on, go to Alaska, go dive and slaughter seals and make bibs for toddlers, but how can I with her dogging my steps all the time?!”

He then launched into his whole life story.

Longest 2 minutes of my life.

“Thanks for listening mate” he said.

I notice his death grip on my pineapple lessening. “Maybe that’s all I needed to do, was talk about it a bit? Maybe, maybe it’s not so bad…”

“She sent you that pineapple” I said.

The man looked at it in horror!

That’s no way to look at a prime pine!

“She planted it in the cafeteria; she knew you’d want it.”

Now an ordinary guy wouldn’t fall for that but that’s why I like crazy people, they’re malleable, when they don’t bite.

The man grabbed the pineapple and made as if to hurl it from him!

“NO!” I yelled, “That’s what she wants you to do!!”

“It is?!” he asked, but then a look of suspicion snarled up his face and made me feel slightly offended that he didn’t trust my lies.

“How would she know? I could toss this fruit and she’d never know! She’d never find out!”

“Ah my friend I said” shaking my head sadly (poor pineapple), “She would know! It’s HER man! HER!! You know she’d know and she’d not let you ever not know how she knew after you did, you know that!”

“My god” he whimpered, “That makes sense…”

He slumped slowly into his seat, his fingers loosening slowly from the fine fruit. If he’d bruised it…

“Life is so hard! I can’t take it! Perhaps I should just end it? If only someone would show me some kindness, maybe things wouldn’t be so….”

I didn’t hear the rest as I yoinked the pineapple from his loose grasp, vaulted over the table, then back over again as it hadn’t been necessary, and ran out the cafeteria doors laughing all the way! SCORE!!!!

But don’t worry our story has a happy ending. The pineapple was delicious!!

Oh, and what happened to the man with the problems you ask?

Don’t worry, I didn’t give him even a small taste!

THE END