Crippled logic

Who was she to kill herself? If anyone deserved that bullet, I did -- a bitter fool in a wheelchair.

By Gary Presley

Jun 4, 2002 | I had never spoken with anyone ready to eat a gun until the day I told a woman that the price of car insurance quadrupled after a drunken driving conviction.

I peddled insurance and I didn't much like my job. I was a cynic, trapped by lies, drenched in disrespect, and angry with myself for choosing an easy job that paid good money rather than seeking work that might challenge me.

I had even thought about riding a bullet out of this world, but it wasn't because of insurance. Insurance wasn't important enough.

It's easy to sell insurance because most people magnify their fears. But most people also hate the insurance industry because they believe no one should profit from trouble. I understood the hate and refused to let it touch me. I had convinced myself the service I sold was useful enough in the grand scheme of life.

Don't think the lies I'm talking about were my own. I never lied about insurance. I didn't care enough. The lies I hated came through the door and over the telephone and piled up on my desk. I believed nearly everyone would lie to get the best of an insurance company.

Lie to get a better rate: "No, I never drive that car to work. And my son doesn't live with me anymore."

Lie to inflate a claim: "Yeah, when they broke into my house they took a real valuable camera collection."

I once met with a customer who killed herself after telling me the truth.

The woman bustled into the office late one Friday afternoon. She said she needed car insurance and needed it quick. I ran down the usual questions. When I came to the one about license suspensions, she replied, "Yeah, that's a problem. I got my license pulled for drunk driving. The judge says I've got to buy insurance before I can get it back."

That kind of story wasn't new, and I had learned not to be judgmental. In fact, I appreciated her forthrightness. It made my job easier. I laid out the procedure. No recriminations. Just hard facts. The money, the time frame, the hassle with the state.

People come to an insurance office thinking it's going to take maybe a paycheck or two to get out of that sort of jam. They're always wrong. A highway patrol officer hauls them off to jail. A clerk pulls their driver's license and takes the bail money. But I was the guy who told them the nasty combination of alcohol and car keys meant they were going to be spending two or three years and two or three thousand dollars climbing out of the trouble they bought by the bottle.

"Oh God," she said. "I don't have that much. And I gotta have my license by Monday so I can get to work."

I have forgotten the woman's name. She was 30, maybe, but her face is hidden now in the shadows of my memory. She was slender, with dark hair down to her shoulders, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket. Ask me now and I'd say she was hard used, too diffident and beaten down for a woman so young.

I wish I had looked more closely into her eyes. Despair is difficult to hide. Maybe one word from me would have deflected the demon bearing down on her. I wonder now if she blinked, or sighed, or if her shoulders slumped. I can't remember.

God forgive me, I didn't care much about her or her problem. I was willing to do my job, politely and thoroughly, but I wasn't going to get involved. I operated with my own brand of misanthropic karma. You drink, you drive, you get caught, you pay.

I like to think I would have been kinder and less businesslike had I known -- that I would have listened better. Maybe I would have offered her a cup of coffee and let her talk out her frustration.

Next Page: Anywhere I appear in my wheelchair -- even at the wrong end of a shotgun -- I am defined first by my disability

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