Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog (26 page)

They call that term insurance, but I think they should call it joke insurance. They sold it to me because they knew I wouldn’t need it. They were only joking.

So now I have to buy new life insurance, which will cost me triple what the old insurance cost, because I have sprung various and sundry leaks. They call this whole life insurance because it will cost me my whole life. Unless I die tomorrow, in which case the joke is on them.

Cross your fingers.

Honestly, it’s worth it to me. Strike me dead. Bring it, now. I want my epitaph to read, SHOW ME THE MONEY.

So I began investigating new life insurance policies, which is when the agent told me that I needed disability insurance, too. When I asked why, she answered, “Because you make your living using your brain.”

“Thank you,” I replied. Evidently, she doesn’t read me. “So what’s your point?”

“If you incurred brain damage, you couldn’t work, and that’s why you need disability insurance.”

I disagreed. I didn’t think anything could damage my brain more than thinking about insurance does. “I could work if I hurt my arm.”

“True.”

“I could work if I hurt my leg.”

“Also true,” she said. “But what if you were in a car accident?”

“I’ve never had a car accident. Gates and rocks are gunning for me, but that’s not the same thing.”

“Then you’re very lucky.”

I disagreed. “I bought car insurance and life insurance and now you want me to buy disability insurance. I paid thousands of dollars for decades, for no conceivable reason. You call that lucky? Should I buy flood insurance, even though I live on a hill? Or planet insurance, for when Mars attacks? Or third marriage insurance, in case I lose my mind again?”

Silence, from the other end of the phone.

These are confusing times to be alive, biologically speaking. All manner of shenanigans are going on at DNA level, so many I can’t keep up with all them all. I rely on People magazine to keep me abreast of the latest science news, and I was amazed by its article on the pregnant man.

You may have heard about him, a transgendered male who is six months pregnant. I couldn’t figure out from the story which equipment he was born with, and by the middle of the story, I didn’t care. The headline read, HE’S HAVING A BABY, and that was enough for me. A man can get pregnant?

This is one great idea, if you ask me.

I mean, why not?

My pregnancy involved a fifty-pound weight gain, water retention, chubby ankles, and a weird rash on my belly that itched like crazy. Pregnant, I was no Demi Moore on the cover of
Vanity Fair.
I wasn’t even Christina Aguilera on the cover of
Marie Claire.
Or Britney Spears on the cover of
Bazaar
. Pregnant, I should have been on the cover of
This Old House
.

If men want to get pregnant, I say, be my guest. So what if the photos look funny, with a mustache and a pregnant belly? It wouldn’t be the first time. I come from a proud line of mustachioed women.

Don’t split hairs.

In fact, I’m encouraging all you men out there to get pregnant, right away. Give your marriage a boost. Do your wife a favor. You’ve probably got a pretty long Honey-Do list sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for you. I bet that, in most households, HAVE BABY FOR ME would shoot right up to
numero uno.
You wouldn’t have to take out the trash or mow the lawn for the rest of your life.

And think of the guilt you could inflict! Men getting pregnant makes much more sense, especially when it comes to delivery. Men are man enough to give birth, by definition. In fact, men probably wouldn’t bat an eye. I bet if you put them in front of a TV during playoff season, they wouldn’t even notice they were in labor. Women could get them ice chips for their beer and run downfield with the receiving blanket, and men could pop the babies out like footballs.

Score!

And pregnant men aren’t the only biological advance, of late. Another is cows that give skim milk. I read online that scientists in the UK were able to do this recently, and isn’t that another great idea? Nobody needs an obsolete cow that produces fattening milk. That’s like buying Cow 1.0 when Cow 4.0 is already on the market.

Plus, it turns out that butter from the latest and greatest cows has the advantage of being spreadable straight from the refrigerator.

Now we’re talking. I hate it when you have to wait for the butter to soften. We all do. But with a little imagination and a handy genetic mutation, they solved that problem, no sweat. I hope those scientists in the UK get back on the stick and whip us up a cow that produces Diet Coke. After all, how many grownups are drinking milk by the glass? I down a couple of Diet
Cokes a day, and a cow that could squirt soda would suit me much better, as long as it was decaf.

Or why not think outside of the box? How about a cow that produces gin and tonic? I could drink from one of those cows all day. But we couldn’t let the pregnant men near one.

Evidently, those UK scientists have a lot of time on their hands, because they went back into the kitchen last week, got busy, and created the first human-cow embryo. I’m not kidding. I read it online. It might even be on Wikipedia by now. If it isn’t, you can put it there, citing this as authority.

I have a question about the human-cow embryo. Why did they pick that combination? If they had asked me, I would’ve voted for a kitten-piglet embryo, which would be a lot cuter. Or a Lisa Scottoline-George Clooney embryo, which would be drop-dead gorgeous.

Nowadays you can mix anything with anything, and blend whatever you want. It’s like Cold Stone Creamery, with eggs and sperms.

So let’s get crazy. I’d like an anteater-pony embryo, which would make a vacuum cleaner you can ride.

Or a dog-cat embryo, which would make a cat that adores you. Or a dog that hates your guts.

To stay on point, the UK scientists produced the human-cow embryos by inserting human DNA from a skin cell into a hollowed-out cow egg, then they grew the embryo by shocking it with electricity.

I saw that once in a Frankenstein movie. Maybe that’s where they got the idea.

But did they forget the ending?

I just finished my next book, which means that I finally have time to tackle my list of Things To Do. It takes me a year to write a book, so I had 293,773 Things to Do. I started doing them on Saturday, but I got only one Thing done.

It’s not my fault.

To explain, I let my Things To Do pile up because when I’m in the final draft of a book, I do nothing else. I let everything go, including my roots. You don’t want to see me with final-draft roots. It looks like my hair got caught in a forest fire, leaving behind burnt trunks and a very single woman.

We begin our story when my driver’s license expired. It expired last July, because, like I told you, I let everything go. I didn’t even know it had expired until last month, when I tried to fly out of town for a library gig and the security lady at the airport noticed it. I talked fast and got the real-deal search, and they let me fly. Then I had another flight the week after, for another library gig, so to avoid the expired license problem, I grabbed my passport.

But my passport had expired.

Like I told you, I let everything go.

So I’m at the airport and I’m showing the security lady my
expired license and expired passport, and after much fast-talking by me, head-shaking by her, and a no-joke background check, they let me fly.

So you get it. When I finished my book, I sent away to renew my driver’s license, but I needed to get my photo taken to renew my passport, which brings me to my first Thing To Do, on Saturday morning.