A modest proposal for marriage insurance

Lori Borgman

When we had our taxes figured, our accountant mentioned his daughter was getting married this summer. He said the rental cost for chairs alone was approaching several thousand dollars.

He explained the guests would need chairs by the Canal Plaza where the ceremony would be, and then they would need chairs inside where the reception would be.

Our accountant’s idea - and granted he’s a CPA, not a wedding planner, but it made perfect sense to us - was to assign each guest a chair and tell them to keep it with them at all times.

“Of course, a BYOC event,” I mused. “Bring your own chair.”

“Exactly,” he said.

His daughter didn't go for it, and, call it coincidence, but our fee for this year’s tax service jumped considerably.
I have been thinking of calling our accountant to let him know about something called wedding insurance.

Responding to the rising cost of weddings, companies now offer liability coverage and coverage for non-refundable deposits. If a tornado rips the roof off the banquet hall, not to worry. Your deposit is as good as in the mail. If the board of health shuts down the caterer, if Uncle Walt dislocates vertebrae doing “Twist and Shout,” if all the wedding photos are out of focus, it’s all covered.

A reader familiar with wedding insurance, and at the end of a painful divorce, asked what an insurance policy for a marriage might look like.

A marriage policy would definitely provide structural coverage. In the event a man and woman fell victim to unexpected hardship that caused their marriage to implode, the insurance company would send Marv and Betty from Jersey City to live with them.

Having been married for 37 years, raised four kids (one with a severe disability) and run a dry cleaning business that went bust twice and was torched once, Marv and Betty would be a daily reminder that obstacles can be overcome.

The personal belongings clause of a marriage policy would cover wardrobe, sports equipment, the remote control, furniture, jewelry, cars, debit and credit cards. Should incessant bickering over material goods result in a claim, the insurance policy would automatically enable the couple to be embedded with troops in Iraq for six months.

A marriage policy would not cover abuse, abandonment or serial adultery, but it would offer liability protection for damage caused by the mouth. This would cover destruction due to a bellicose tone, brutal sarcasm, yelling, sniping, carping, and mean-spirited jokes.

Such liability coverage would be offered, but few could afford it.

The only thing close to marriage insurance is nestled in the wedding vows. It’s that part when the starry-eyed couple pledges faithfulness for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

It’s not insurance, and it’s not a guarantee, but it’s a vow, and that’s as close as any two human beings can come.

It is much easier to insure a wedding than a marriage. But why wouldn't it be? They are two entirely different things.

Only Paris has the credentials

Lori Borgman

When Paris Hilton puts out a book about doing time, it’s sure to be a best-seller. Right up there with the Alec Baldwin “Guide to Parenting” and Sheryl Crow’s “Toilet Training Manual: A Square a Day Keeps the Health Department Away.”

No doubt there will be a multi-million dollar contract and a working title like “The Simple Life Behind Bars."

A friend asked, if she were arrested for a similar crime and sentenced to jail, whether I thought she could garner similar publicity.

“Depends,” I said. “Paris has spent a lot of time building a reputation and a following.”

“You’re saying I’m not popular?”

“I’m saying you might lack credentials. For example, would a tabloid pay a million bucks for a picture of you in the back seat of a squad car?

“I’d be lucky if they paid 19 cents for a digital print at the drug store..”

“Exactly. And, do you party till you puke? Do you carry a dog in your purse? Can you look dumb, act dumb and talk dumb?”

“Are you insane?”

“Listen, don’ t get snippy; you’re the one who asked what I thought your chances were. Are you an heiress? What does your dad do?”

“You know I’m not an heiress and my dad does cardio rehab and sometimes he gardens.”

“Not good enough. He needs to make a boatload of money, own a franchise of something and have a famous last name. I hate to tell you, but it’s not looking good. But maybe your hair . . . . how do you feel about going blond?”

“That one L’oreal and I could do.”

“Great. Now show me your best spoiled-little-rich-girl-pout.”

My friend squints her eyes and furrows her brow.

“That’s not a pout, that’s a scorn! You’ve been a mom too long. Think 2-year-old throwing a tantrum. Jut your jaw and stick out your bottom lip.”

“I spent years wiping that look off my kids’ faces; I’m not going to put it on my own.”

“Then I think you can plan on being locked away without any fanfare, CNN, FOX News, and paparazzi chronicling every time you jerk your head and flick your hair. There might be one thing – “

“What?”

“How are you stocked for sunglasses? Paris always wears sunglasses when she wants to create a stir. They have to be big, a cross between early Sally Jesse Raphael and something left over from the Kennedy administration.”

“I may have a pair in the toybox.”

“Things are looking up. How are you with hamburgers?”

“Fine. I like them with anything -- ketchup, mustard, pickles, onion.”

“No, no! Could you slither around, pant like a dog and dance in a pair of short shorts for a hamburger commercial?”

“Look at this body. It doesn’t dance for burgers, it eats burgers.”

“Sorry, but with squeaky clean credentials like yours, the only cameras following you will be the surveillance ones on the automatic doors.”

Need chicken soup for the stressed soul?

Lori Borgman

Some people relieve stress by deep breathing, going to a spa, or watching fish swim in an aquarium. My brother says raising chickens is the way to reduce stress.

In March, he purchased six fluffy pullets that arrived in a cardboard box with holes punched in the top -- three Rhode Island Reds and three Buff Orpingtons.

He wanted only four, so he ordered two extra and that way if – feathers forbid – something should happen to a couple, he’s still completely and totally relaxed.

Naturally, the chickens have acquired names: Scramble, Omelet, Fried, Boiled, Over Easy and Nuggets. You can’t very well relax with chickens if you can’t call them by name.

Because he is one of those guys who, when he sees something he wants done, just goes ahead and does it, he built the chicken coop himself.

The red and white coop now standing toward the back of his acreage has a pop-hole.

A pop-hole sounds like a place where the chickens might throw back a Pepsi or Coke, but it is actually a little door that opens to a ramp that leads to the chicken yard (otherwise known as the rec center).

The coop has nesting boxes, a roost, water dispenser, feeder, the prerequisite shovel for scooping you know what, and a yard with a hot-wired fence in case predators, or the dogs, get hungry for a round of chicken tenders.

It also has a nifty little door you can open from the outside, reach in and pluck eggs from the nests.

If you were a chicken, you would give the coop a four-star rating. The only thing missing is a television in one of those big cabinets with doors that swing open and a little nightstand with a Bible in the top drawer.

In the evenings my brother, who can get wound a little tight (it runs in the family) likes to go down and watch the chickens. He says it is so relaxing it just turns him into (I quote) -- “a big bowl of Jell-O.”

He has tried to involve his boys in the relaxing ways of chickens and they have, um, declined.

He has tried to involve his wife in poultry relaxation by encouraging her to walk down to the coop every morning and evening in preparation for when the chickens may actually lay eggs and she told him -- well, she also declined.

Sometimes he is so relaxed he gets in the pen with the chickens and, in the interest of maximizing relaxation, chases them from one side of the pen to the other. They kick up dust, squawk and beat their scrawny wings. He snatches one, turns and says, “Here, you want to hold it?”

Apparently, this is the relaxing part, but I am the antithesis of relaxed at the thought of holding a Rhode Island Red that’s trying to peck my hand, jugular and eyes.

It will be several months before the chickens begin laying eggs. Given his current investment in materials, the first few eggs will run $41 apiece. A three-egg omelet could represent $120 in start-up capital.

Some people might find an omelet that expensive makes them feel stressed and up tight -- a situation they could easily remedy by raising chickens.

What's Hollywood been inhaling?

Lori Borgman

Few things are as disconcerting as Hollywood offering to help parent the kids. Their latest gesture is a day late and a pack short.

In case you missed it, the people who rate the movies are cracking down. On what, you ask: Unnecessary violence? Slasher films? Casual sex?

No. On cigarettes.

Gonna snuff those babies out under a hard-soled shoe.

Films with “glamorized smoking” or “pervasive smoking” will now be candidates for an R rating. All of which is intended to curb smoking in young people.

I’m all for curbing smoking – a terrible habit, dirty habit, expensive habit, hard-to-kick habit -- but find me a warm body of any age that doesn’t already know smoking is bad for your health.

We’ve been beating smokers and the tobacco industry with a club for years. First was the Surgeon General’s warning on the side of the pack, followed by the one-two punch knocking out television advertising. Then came the Holy War on Joe Camel, bans on smoking in the workplace, three-piece suits suing tobacco companies, sirens about the dangers of second hand smoke and finally, bans on public smoking.

In another decade or so, any remaining smokers in the country will be sealed in a plastic cube and put on display at the Smithsonian.

The point is, it’s not like people don’t know smoking is bad. Everybody knows.

So the whole R rating for movies depicting smoking is, how shall we say . . . perhaps a word Hollywood might understand – gratuitous?

If the movie industry is all that concerned about behavior on screen that may influence youthful behavior off the screen, why limit the focus to cigarettes?

What about all the sexual activity that desensitizes? Why not put a warning before movies listing sexually transmitted infections, which ones are on the rise, the symptoms, the cost of the prescriptions, the treatable ones, the untreatable ones and the ones that lead to infertility.

Why not include a little on-screen realism where all the beautiful people who hop from bed to bed to bed also hop on over to the health clinic, the gynecologist’s office and the urologist’s office? Now that would be a genuine public service.

How about a little hand wringing over the movies that desensitize to death? Last year’s "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" prequel, the movie about of maniac killer Leatherface and his cannibalistic family, grossed $19.15 million in its first weekend. The audience? Largely young people.

I had the chagrin to encounter a high school senior who saw the movie opening day and sat next to a woman who brought her 6-year-old child.

And now, coming to a theater near you, a movie about suicide: “Wristcutters: A Love Story” opens with a young man cleaning up his apartment, putting on a good shirt and killing himself in the bathroom. He goes to a bizarre purgatory where he meets others who have committed suicide and they compare notes on how they took themselves out.
The ad campaign, featuring images of young people killing themselves, is directed to 17- to 30-year olds. Fourteen mental health groups have expressed outrage.

A tougher rating system for movies that portray smoking is transparent opportunism. It is Hollywood seizing the opportunity to look good as opposed to actually being good -- a game of smoke and mirrors.