by E.B. Bartels
For my whole life, every time I have gotten into a car accident of any kind, even the most minor of fender benders, my first thought is: My family is going to kill me.
In other families, you bang up your car and you shout and curse and then sigh and call your insurance company and shrug: accidents happen, oh well. This is why you have insurance in the first place. The worst that will happen likely is a surcharge; maybe someone yells at you, you feel like an idiot, but you move on with your life.
But when your grandfather is also your insurance agent, things are different.
One might think that in a family that sells insurance, accidents are especially routine. When he travels, my grandfather, Puppy, speculates on the number of car accidents that occur on each foreign highway––thinking about damage and disasters is a way of life. Bad things are bound to happen, that’s why everyone has insurance in the first place. You would think we would be used to these things by now, even more used to them than the average person. But it seems that because we spend so much time thinking about worst-case scenarios, that is where our thoughts dwell.
Harold L. Andersen Insurance, Inc. is my family’s business, founded by my great-grandparents––Harold and Ida Andersen––in 1934. The insurance agency is located on Highland Avenue in Somerville, north of Boston. It’s an old, one-story, one-room structure with brown peeling paint, slouching almost, as it tries to support the weight of the heavy illuminated sign hanging out over the sidewalk: bold black capitals read Andersen Insurance, and in smaller script, generously rounding down, Since 1930.
Before starting the insurance agency, Harold and Ida had two children: Harold Jr. and Eddie. But as a toddler, Eddie was struck and killed by a truck in reverse. Ida had a breakdown after losing Eddie, and she moved back in with her mother for six months. Eventually, Harold and Ida had two more children––my grandfather, George, in 1934, and a girl, Joanie, in 1937––but I can’t imagine the hurt ever went away. There’s a difference between a dent in a bumper and a totaled car. Not all the insurance in the world can protect you from something like that.
But protection seemed worth a shot.
Maybe it was the Great Depression. Maybe Harold wanted to shelter his other children. Maybe Harold was simply looking to supplement his income as a telephone lineman, but in 1934 Harold started writing insurance policies for his family, neighbors, and friends. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t flashy. But automobile and homeowner’s insurance was reliable and consistent. In insurance, they were safe, secure. Harold spread out his papers on the dining room table, open for business. He wrote policies to protect his community from loss and harm, and so Harold protected himself and his family against loss and harm.
Ever since, insurance has been part of the Andersen family. Puppy and Joanie took over the business from their parents; Puppy, now 86, still goes to work every day. Both my mom and her sister, Christine, clocked hours answering phones; Mom still helps out when one of the agency’s two non-family employees goes on vacation. I started making photocopies and filing policies when I was eight. I began to answer phones and process payments when I was fourteen. I worked at Andersen Insurance every summer during high school and the ones in college when I wasn’t abroad. I’ve never been unemployed, because I always could work at the insurance office.
I loved the insurance office long before I understood what they did there. It was the warm wooden walls, the bright sunlight through the enormous picture windows, the sound of the typewriters. I liked surprising Puppy at his desk in the back room. Andersen Insurance was my earliest babysitter; I knew it as a place to spend time in the summer, reading a book when the phones were quiet, writing my own stories on the Smith-Corona. Insurance, to me, was synonymous with comfort. Insurance felt homey.
That is, until I fully understood what insurance is: my family’s livelihood was based on people in peril. Things must be bad out there for so many individuals to drop huge sums to try to save themselves from such horrors. Insurance is the business of thinking about and helping customers plan for worst-case scenarios. We are professional worriers. And that anxiety has been inherited right along with the insurance agency. Worrying is the family business.
The summer I was sixteen-and-a-half, I took driver’s ed. I had been driving long before I first sat in that auto-school classroom––my parents let me start when I was only fourteen––but Puppy insisted on a formal education. In addition to being an insurance agent, my grandfather taught driving for thirty years––another reason that getting into any sort of car accident is such an Andersen family sin.
My grandfather was a natural driving teacher. Puppy taught my grandmother, Nunni, to drive a standard shift car when they were engaged. He taught both of his daughters, and gave them auto school leftovers for their first cars, with brakes on both the driver and passenger sides. Though despite his natural talent as a teacher, Puppy was too anxious to take my mom and Christine for their license tests; he had another one of the driving school instructors take them. Puppy taught most of the city of Somerville to drive, until his last official student received her license in spring 1988, and he closed the school. But fifteen years later, he began teaching again. Puppy would come over to my house in snowstorms and take me out in his 1993 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. Puppy would instruct me to back up the boat of a car down the dead-end street next to our house. When I reached the end of the road, Puppy got out of the car, stretch his back, and examine my tire tracks in the snow to see if they were straight. “You have to be able to drive backwards before you can drive forwards,” Puppy told me, before making me drive to the top of the street and repeat the process. Then, after, he would drag two trash barrels from our garage and have me practice parallel parking between them.
Though my parents took me out to practice too (Mom’s advice: “On the road, he who hesitates is dead!”), my lessons with Puppy made me cocky and confident. The first time I sat behind a wheel during driver’s ed, I already felt like an old pro. For someone who was too terrified to ride a bike, and too frightened to learn how to rollerblade or ski or skate, somehow my nerves disappeared when I sat in a car. Puppy had given me the confidence that many of my new-driver friends lacked, screaming as they merged onto the highway, paralyzed trying to parallel park.
When the day finally came to taking my driving test, once again, Puppy was too nervous to go with me. So was Mom. Dad took me instead. My usual test-taking nervousness disappeared. I had this. I was an Andersen. Arrogant as ever, I went to make a right at a stop sign, about to cut off another car. The tester slammed on the brakes, and both Dad and I were certain I failed. At the end, though, the tester grudgingly gave me my license. “I know you can drive,” he said, “just don’t be so sure of yourself.”
Don’t be so sure of yourself––that could be the motto of Andersen Insurance. No matter how successful you may be, there is always that underlying fear of loss. Every dream achieved is charged with anxiety that it could disappear. A car accident, a truck in reverse, a fire, a flood. In one blink, all gone. Don’t be so sure of yourself.
Yet: insurance is based on a system of commercialized gambling. It is hedging bets, guessing the odds of how likely it is some bad thing will happen to you. It’s an imaginary commodity that preys on fears and anxieties and relies on luck and strategy. It’s an industry that is convincing you to buy something you may, hopefully, never need.
But there is always the chance you might, and insurance is a guarantee against loss or harm. That’s all anyone wants: reassurance that everything will be okay. No, insurance can’t save you from everything, but it can help with the aftermath. It can help you figure out how to move on. There is hope in insurance. There is safety in insurance. Insurance is supposed to protect you and make you less worried.
And here’s the thing: there are things out there that are worth the risk. The fear of accidents does not outweigh the pleasures of driving––otherwise Andersen Insurance would have shuttered its doors long ago. People see it is worth it to pay for this thing that will protect them while doing another thing they love.
I inherited the 1993 Cadillac when I got my license, and that car was both security and freedom to me. I felt it from the moment I took my first solo trip. My mom allowed me to drive the ten minutes from our house to Nunni and Puppy’s––of course, flying out of one nest and into the other, demanding I call as soon as I arrived––but in those ten minutes, I felt bliss I hadn’t known was possible. I rolled the windows down. The wind whipping my hair across my face made me feel free and wild, and I realized that I could go anywhere. I said I would drive to Nunni’s, but I could make a left and go to the mall, or turn around and head to my friend’s house. No one could control me in the car. No one could smother me with their worries there. But, for all the freedom, I also felt secure. The car itself was a barrier from the outside. I could roll up the windows if it started to rain and be dry and warm. And the Cadillac was built like a tank; I was sure I’d live even if I got hit by a sixteen-wheeler. The car could protect me from weather, smells, insects, pollen, trucks, and even my worrying family.
Driving in my car was the first time in my life I felt truly alone. Even for all the time I spent by myself as an only child––reading in my room, sewing clothes for my stuffed animals, creating elaborate worlds with my plastic horses, constructing a pillow fort, collecting rocks––I sensed the presence of someone nearby. The pressing energy of someone’s fears and worries, stirring up my own. I could hear my mom in the kitchen downstairs, or I would glimpse Nunni’s watching face through the window as I gathered acorn in the front yard, or I listened to Puppy clear his throat and stammer, “Uh, you sure about that, pal?” In the car, though, I was alone. I wasn’t even held responsible to answering my cell phone; in fact, I wasn’t supposed to touch it while driving. I began to understand perhaps why the Andersens love cars so much––it was the only way we could escape each other.
I put my foot on the gas pedal, driving a little bit faster than I should, but it’s okay. I’ve got insurance.
