10 Bentleys

Because what if in the event of an accident, god forbid, something happens to you and you aren’t in a position to meet the challenges and rise to the occasion, rectifying whatever damages were incurred?

Is it the responsibility of innocent loved ones to suffer when you encounter a blow, to swallow the blow (BEND OVER, kiddies!), from which you may or may not recover?

Is it worth what may happen to your loved ones and the loved ones of all involved parties, which may include people better off than you, again god forbid, or people worse off, who will have an even harder time meeting challenges in times of financial strain?

Are you in the habit of thinking of yourself and yourself only?

Have you heard that we are not alone here, that nothing happens in a vacuum as we are all connected, all bound to one another, each having rights and privileges, which come with responsibilities, which you seem so willing to shirk, which you seem hell bent on shirking even as you cling to the freedoms you must imagine are free?

Because freedom isn’t free.

Because have you imagined what might happen, what conceivably will happen, god forbid, or are you so depraved that you have no powers of imagination, to say nothing of a sense of duty to your fellow man, so imaginatively bankrupt that you do not even entertain the very likely possibility that you are not an exception to the rule, the rules already not being in your favor or else would you even question that which everyone else dutifully accepts, owing no doubt to their firm grasp on the horrors that await them, not to mention their good will and faith in people like us—good people, people like you, with loved ones—to do the thinking, to do the worrying, to take care of all manner of horrors, to nip said horrors in the bud, so to speak, heading off disaster before disaster strikes, because it will strike, mark our words—whereas we can soften the blow and offer in place of the unspeakable horrors (which are as yet unknown, but of which we refer) the opposite of horror, horror being fear itself, can offer confidence in the assurance that you have guarded against the worst case scenario, that you have earned your rights and privileges with no thought of shirking, that you have spared your loved ones the indignity of bending over?

Because while you sit idly by contemplating the pros and cons as if there were a choice to be made, weighing an $81 per month fee for an annual total of $960 for liability and liability only against the value of a 1992 Honda Accord whose antenna makes a loud farting noise whenever the car is turned on or off and whose automatic windows on the driver’s and backseat passenger’s sides do not roll up, but must be pulled up while pressing the automatic window button and steering with one knee as you avoid lobbing off a finger or two in the up-pulling of the window, and which smells sometimes like cat pee, which you determine to be cat pee when a neighborhood cat is seen jumping out of the open window and again when cat pee is found sitting, just sitting, in a pool, on a plastic bag—we are calculating relevant numbers.

Because do you even crunch the right numbers?

Do you even think about the 2013 Bentley?

Do you know, as we do, that there are right now or at least conceivably could be ten 2013 Bentleys lined up—not innocently on a conveyor belt waiting to be shipped and sold, but on a freeway somewhere very close to you, to your freeway, the one you enter every day, that bastard freeway whose ground you curse whenever you come to a dead stop, stuck between work and home, between time off and fuck off as tick-tock!, the minutes in your non-working hours vanish, poof!, as fast as the interest accrues on a college loan for a degree you pay for but which never itself pays?

Because those 10 Bentleys might be lined up right now, before you or behind you, driven by 10 CEOs, say, with ivy-league lawyers bulging out of their eye sockets for a total of 10 Bentleys and 20 corporate lawyers with $enate aspirations, and have you truly imagined the worst case scenario, the damage a single car can do to 10 Bentleys in the event of an accident should, say, your brakes fail, and how do you know they won’t fail, that someone is not right now under the car tampering with them?

Because are you sure you didn’t need the air filter the service guy said you needed when you just wanted an oil change, and can you even be sure it was oil he put in your car after you so haughtily refused the air filter, quipping “My air filter is dirty because I keep it in my car,” to which he did not even crack a smile?
And even if your brakes don’t fail and the oil really is oil, can you be sure your foot will work, that you won’t sneeze, that someone else won’t sneeze, and did you tell the loved ones you love them or was the last thing you told them something sort of pissy like “I don’t want to hear it. You’re not going to ruin another day of my life by drawing me into your inconsequential quarrels,” and then shouting “I SAID GO! NOW!”

To a couple of eight-year-olds? Like something good can come of that? Like that’s not a form of child abuse? Like your whole life didn’t just amount to you being a giant bully to two 8-year-old girls climbing orange trees in the backyard as they bicker benignly about who’s a bigger liar when maybe, just maybe, the liar is you?

Because we’ll tell you who is not lying and who has thought all this out for you and taken the necessary precautions so that you don’t have to think about anything except how to be a better parent, how to be patient when the loved ones come to you because who are they supposed to go to if not you?

Because who are they supposed to think wise and look up to if not you who, having lived and learned, having made tough choices and accepted the responsibilities that come with rights and privileges by seizing opportunities to safeguard—opportunities which are illegal to refuse, making null and void or at least totally irrelevant all other reasons which we have kindly laid out for you at no extra charge to you?

It is we, that’s who!—we who are not lying when we tell you that your thoughts to shirk can land you in jail, can conceivably be the basis for losing your loved ones in a much publicized trial about your fitness as a parent, as a human being, during which your mistakes—such as bullying, such as a pattern of shirking and bad humor and a general ill will—may be aired and amplified, may be cause for further action?

Because we understand you, your needs, which are simple, really, the needs of a hard-working parent who wants only peace of mind, especially on that death trap they call a freeway, which we are offering to you for a small fee, which is a small price to pay for a better life, which is harder and harder to come by, but which can be yours, not through us, of course, we don’t do that, help you have a better life, but we can help you not have a worse life, which anyway is better than nothing, better than the worst case scenario, which you can bet on, believe us.