Essay

Hail! To The Worrier

/ Tim Severson / 1 Comment

“Why are you sweaty, Daddy?”

“Am I?” I ask, running my hand along my forearm, “I guess I am.”

Before we move on, it’s essential to disclose that I’m not too fond of the wind. In fact, I despise it. I am not a sailor or kite enthusiast. I only find the wind beneficial when it cools me down on a hot day, unless I’m on the golf course. 

While returning from a walk on a windy day late this spring, I noticed a small section of shingles that appeared to be missing near the highest peak of my roof. I snapped a picture with my phone and decided since I knew nothing about roofs, I would look for someone who did.  

My ability to ignore problems that I presume to be expensive is near a super-human level. 

That’s going to be expensive. Let’s ignore it, I thought when I felt my molar crack after biting into a boneless wing at Buffalo Wild Wings in my late twenties. Of course, my tooth had been sore for a while before it broke. An average person would have gone to a dentist as soon as possible. I pride myself on being below average, so I lived with aching pain on the left side of my face for at least a year. 

I discovered I could chew on one side of my mouth, and Ibuprofen would help me through most of it. What makes me so impressive is my ability to fight through the times when the pain consumed almost the entire left side of my face and still find a way to ignore the fact the problem would be solved by making an appointment. The bright side? Root canals aren’t bad when you have been in agony for months, aside from the Endodontist remarking at how sore the tooth must’ve been multiple times throughout the procedure. 

I knew. Jesus, I knew.

As days turned to weeks, my house felt like a sore tooth every time it rained. I would wince at the sight of dark clouds, knowing I had a potential problem above my head. 

The last week of June, the doorbell rang in the middle of the day. I answered, ignoring my desire to fall into my regular hiding routine when someone comes to my door. I worry, occasionally, that saying, “Don’t open the door,” as though the cartel or a bookie to whom I owe money is standing on the other side of the door hoping to get in, will give my children a complex. 

I guess I will find out in about twenty years or so.

I answered the door with the swagger of a man with nothing to hide, and a young man in his early twenties stood on my front step. He launched into his pitch when I opened the door, offering me a free roof inspection for hail damage. 

“I don’t know about hail damage, but I want to show a spot I know needs attention,” I said as he followed me into my front lawn to get a better vantage point to look at the section of roof I had seen in the spring. 

“I actually don’t know a lot about what happens next, but if you would like us to do an inspection, my boss will come over and take a look. He can answer your questions.”

I told him to send his boss over. I’ve been through this same song and dance before when a kid showed up at my door trying to sell me a Kirby vacuum. At least the kid from Kirby gave me a bag of gummy worms. 

When the boss man came to my door, he told me we had hail in August 2023. I informed him about the spot on my roof I was concerned about, but he made it clear his mission was to get on my roof and find hail damage. I left him to look around on my roof.

He finished his inspection in fifteen minutes and informed me he had found hail damage. He started scrolling through pictures of my roof on his phone; at least, that’s what he said. It could have been a picture of any roof. That is not to say I thought he was tricking me, but more to demonstrate that my knowledge of shingles is limited to the disgusting virus that showed up on my arm a couple of years ago. 

The salesman also showed me a crack in my siding, which I immediately called out was caused by my eight-year-old and not Mother Nature. My honesty was not the correct answer, as he explained that it had the characteristics of hail damage. 

He quickly explained the order of events, and I signed a few documents on an iPad. 

No, I didn’t read the agreements I was signing. Yes, he told me what the agreements said. No, I wasn’t listening. No, I didn’t ask any questions. Yes, I’m aware I should have gotten clarification on what I was agreeing to.  

My brain shut off when I recognized that getting a brand new roof due to hail damage is a big game I am forced to play because I own a house. 

He quickly had a representative from my home insurance company on speaker phone and began filing a claim. By the time he left, I had convinced myself all of this was great news since he seemed confident my insurance company would agree that I needed a new roof and new siding, all for the low price of my $1,000 insurance deductible. 

The following morning, I found myself in a terrific mood, trying to slow the pace of our Wednesday morning by snuggling with my daughter on the couch before taking her to daycare. Then, I got a text message from my insurance company, which gave me a brief policy outline and informed me about the cost of my deductible. 

Immediately, my mood improved as I patted myself on the back for remembering the cost of my deductible despite not thinking about home insurance since we bought our house six years ago. I read on to discover there was a little more to the story. 

This is when the heat in my chest began to build, and every inch of my skin started to sweat, prompting my daughters question. It turns out my deductible for wind and hail damage is $11,820. 

The extra twenty dollars feels a little excessive, doesn’t it?

I understand the reaction to that dollar amount will vary. I am aware that relative to the cost of a new roof and siding, it is a drop in the bucket. However, it feels substantial when you are an unemployed writer with an exceptionally small following. 

After I got my kids to school, I occupied the rest of my time conjuring up the different scenarios and paths I would lead my family down to financial ruin because I quit my job. 

It’s odd to be acutely aware when my mind spirals out of control. I have a voice in my head shouting rationalizations. Unfortunately, that voice exists in the way back of the vehicle, driving off a cliff into a pit of despair. 

A week later, I had an appointment with a roofing company representative and an adjuster from my insurance company. The plan was for the two of them to climb up on my roof and determine my fate as I curled up in the fetal position in my shower, fully clothed. However, due to the kind of communication you would expect from an insurance company, the adjuster never showed up. 

The gentleman from the roofing company got up to take a look for himself and promised to specifically examine the section of my roof that had started this mess. When he finished, he told me it looked like the section of roof I noticed had been previously repaired, but a shingle was missing up there. He then informed me, with confidence, that there was hail damage on the roof, and it would more than likely need to be replaced. The humid, eighty-five-degree weather allowed the sweat forming all over my body to go unnoticed. Or, at least, unquestioned.

I spent the next forty-eight hours trying to decide what soul-sucking job I should find to eat up the next twenty-five to thirty years of my life while I awaited the rescheduled appointment with the adjuster. 

A statistic about worry has popped up in multiple memes, videos, and posts on the internet. Cornell University did a study on worry and found 85% of what the subjects studied worried about never happened. With the 15% that did happen, subjects discovered they could handle it better than expected. I have yet to find the data on this study, but when I first read this statistic, I thought: I’m worried those people don’t know how to worry properly. 

Of course, we don’t need to find this study to know it is true. Even the most unseasoned of worriers know that most of the time, the real bad stuff in life is not the things that consume our thoughts. Instead, the bad stuff barges in unannounced, like the Kool-Aid Man. 

Knowing this doesn’t stop me.

When the insurance adjuster and the roofer showed up for the rescheduled appointment, I braced myself as I listened to their footsteps on the roof like a couple of reverse Santa Clause’s searching for a way to take eleven thousand dollars up the chimney. I distracted myself from that by wondering what my deductible would be if they took a wrong step and fell off my roof. 

The moment of truth came with a tap-tappity-tap-tap on my front door from the insurance adjuster.

After greeting me with one of the limpest handshakes I have ever been a part of, he began to give me his assessment of the damage. I braced for what I deemed to be the inevitable.

“Well, I got up there and took a look around. I have to say your roof is in great shape. There are some small impressions from hail…” I stopped listening as relief swept through my body, and I eyed the roofer. I expected to see an eye roll or a slight shake of the head as he listened to an assessment directly contradicting the reports I had gotten on the status of my roof. To my surprise, he stood resolute with a poker face that could inspire Lady Gaga to write a hit single. 

I decided to check back into the assessment. The insurance adjuster continued, “… you are missing a shingle, so you should get that repaired. Otherwise, your roof is in great shape.”

I positioned my hand for a fist bump to avoid another wet noodle handshake. The fist bump was only a fraction less awkward.

As the adjuster made his way to his truck, the roofer started in with his final assessment, “Yeah… So… Like he said, you’re roof is in good shape, and you just need to repair that shingle.” 

We had a brief discussion as I had questions, shockingly, about the cost of repairing a single shingle on a roof. He made it sound like they would send somebody out to fix it with little trouble. 

I decided to ask him what he thought about my wind and hail deductible, thinking that since he has these conversations often, he could let me know if my current deductible is higher than average. 

I missed the answer to my question because he spun off on a fifteen-minute tangent about hurricane insurance and how expensive it is for people who live in hurricane regions. As a guy in Minnesota who will never move to a state in a hurricane zone, this information will surely come in handy. 

As the roofer walked to his truck, I allowed myself a moment to enjoy the relief with the hot summer sun shining on my face. I imagine it’s what Andy Dufresne felt like his first morning on the beach in Zihuatanejo. 

The following morning, my phone rang. It was another roofing company offering a free inspection. Another roofing company called in the afternoon. Over the next ten days, I would receive forty-two calls from people wanting to get on my roof to check for damage. 

As I write this, my shingle is yet to be repaired. To make life more interesting, I have two weeks to find a new home insurance company as my current company is leaving the country. 

You may ask yourself, how can he continue to put these things off, knowing they will only cause unnecessary and prolonged anxiety?

As the old saying goes, I am one shingle short of a complete roof. Literally.

That’s how. 

Cheers.

The NIT, AITA?

/ Tim Severson / Leave a comment

“You’re an asshole,” my wife, Jenni, said to me walking into our townhouse in Maple Grove, MN, upon returning home from work. 

A smirk was fighting through her incensed facial expression, letting me know she meant it lovingly.

If a happy marriage means not regularly calling your spouse vulgar names out of love, I don’t want it. 

“What did I do?” I asked.

I suppose I could have made some guesses, but that only would have reminded her of the dozens of other reasons I am an actual asshole rather than a loveable asshole.

“N, I, T,” she said.

“What about it?”

“Not in tournament, tournament,” she said, impersonating me.

After a moment, a smile slowly began to form on my face as a distant memory jumped to the front of my brain.

About a decade earlier, when we were teenagers, Jenni asked, “What’s the NIT?”

“It’s another end-of-season basketball tournament. It’s like a consolation tournament.”

“What does NIT stand for?”

Without hesitation, I said, “The tournament has been around for a long time. At first, the tournament board tried to compete with the March Madness tournament we know today. Still, good teams would choose the other tournament invite for whatever reason. So they’ve always gotten teams not invited to the big tournament. I can’t remember what it was initially named, but people used that tournament to make fun of rival schools by saying they were playing in the “Not In Tournament” tournament. People quickly abbreviated it to NIT, and the tournament board decided to lean into it.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Isn’t it? I’m surprised you’d never heard that before.”

I laughed to myself at the time. We moved on from the topic and never talked about it again. 

“I had a lunch meeting at work today. I was the only girl at the table, and everyone was talking about basketball. The NIT came up, and someone asked what NIT stood for,” Jenni said, face flushing as she recalled the embarrassment. “I was so excited to contribute to the conversation and told the whole story about how it stands for ‘Not In Tournament.'”

“No, you didn’t,” I said, laughing.

“I did. I thought I was sooo smart until someone else at the table told me it wasn’t true.”

Doing this is a habit of mine. I will provide reasonable-sounding answers to questions based on my pre-existing knowledge and an educated guess. I am surprised by my own answers from time to time. 

I don’t do it with malicious intent. There are two reasons I will do this.

One: If I’m talking to someone I care for, I will do it as a private joke for myself. If that person catches it, we both laugh. If they don’t catch it, I laugh. I laugh again if they embarrass themselves by re-telling my fabricated fact and then tell me it happened. 

Two: If I’m talking to strangers or acquaintances, I will do it to prevent an awkward silence in the conversation. If there is one thing I hate more than hearing about other people’s dreams, it’s an awkward silence during a conversation with someone I don’t know. 

This may be a learned behavior. 

When playing golf with my brother, PJ, recently, he tried it on me. 

“Killer whales won’t eat humans,” PJ said.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yep. Don’t like the taste of ’em,” PJ said. 

“You are so full of shit,” I said, laughing.

He could’ve had me with a little more explanation.

If the roles were reversed, I would have gone into a detailed explanation of why they don’t eat humans.

Something like: Marine biologists have varying theories as to why instances of killer whales eating humans are so rare. The most common explanation is that the humans they encounter wear SCUBA suits since killer whales are primarily found in colder ocean water. They may be intelligent enough to know the suits are not digestible. Still, it may be as simple as not liking the clothing texture. 

I’ve learned that the more detail you provide and the more technical jargon you use, the better your chance of avoiding follow-up questions. 

Some may have moral qualms about doing this. Granted, it is inherently deceptive, but is it better from a social standpoint to say, “I don’t know,” and reach for your phone to Google the answer?

It’s not as though the information on the internet is much more reliable. I am not attempting to sway people’s political opinions, take money from them, or provide medical advice that could endanger their lives. 

Often, I will read headlines or hear facts on TikTok that are too good for me to research further. I don’t pass these things off as facts. Rather, I provide a disclaimer either at the beginning or end of the anecdote: “I don’t know if it’s true, but I saw/read it and am choosing to believe it is.”

If the idea of doing this has piqued your interest, and you have children, you have a perfect place to practice. 

I don’t look at it as lying. It’s an excellent way to slow the flow of questions being hurled from the car’s back seat in rapid succession. 

Questions like: Daddy, how many cars are there in the world? 

Daddy, what if the road was made of water? 

Daddy, why are there traffic lights? 

Daddy, was everything black and white in the world when you were a kid? You know, in the olden days?

“The olden days,” the nerve… as if I needed a reason to fill them with misinformation. 

There is one story I am determined to make both of my kids believe and repeat. 

There is a power plant in Becker, MN. We drive by frequently on our trips up to Brainerd, MN. When the temperatures get frigid in the winter, the stacks’ steam makes it look like a cloud factory rather than a power plant. 

And that is precisely what I tell my children it is: a cloud factory. 

On cold, clear days when no steam comes from the stacks, I’ll say, “Oh, no wonder it’s so sunny; the cloud factory has the day off.”

I hope a day will come for my children when someone says, “There isn’t a cloud in the sky today.”

And they’ll respond, without hesitation or irony, “The cloud factory in Becker must have the day off.”

Maybe that day will be the first day my children will come through the front door and call me an asshole. 

A Dad can dream…

As the years have passed, Jenni has gotten brazen in her attempts to fact-check me when she believes I am up to my old tricks. 

“You’re just making that up,” she says. 

“Look it up,” I’ll say. 

What happens next has turned into a good way for me to gauge her mood towards me on a given day. 

I know she is really in love with me when she responds, “You know a lot of things.”

Conversely, when she’s irritated with me, she quickly picks up her phone to search for the answer, or if we’re at home, she’ll shout, “Alexa!”

It works out in my favor almost every time. When Jenni decides to be a fact-checker, I am often surprised to find out my answer is either correct or at least accurate enough that it is brushed away because I missed the mark on minor details. 

What keeps me at it and what makes it worth the mental energy are the times my answers go unchecked. Those answers are usually those I am confident would expose me as a liar. 

It makes me feel like Timmy Appleseed scattering jokes down the path of life, which will grow into future laughs. Never knowing when one will sprout and force my wife to start a conversation with, “You’re an asshole,” in a loving way rather than filled with contempt like how all of our other conversations start.

Cheers.