The Case of the Protected Property

I was excited as I approached my pal Edison’s house, and not just because I could finally get out of the pouring rain. He was an inventor, and his place was always filled with crazy contraptions.

I had a little of the inventor’s genius in me too. Back in high school, Edison and I even started an inventors club. While he created a machine to clap erasers and a special straw that increased spit-wad accuracy by 47%, I invented a girlfriend who lived in Canada.

I walked in and found him hunched over his work table, as usual, with a high-power magnifying visor strapped over his eyes. He took one look at me and screamed, “Yikes!”

“Whoa, Ed, it’s me, Ace.”

He quickly took the visor off and smiled. “Ah, Ace! When magnified 100 times, you look like a sponge monster. By the way, there’s a small growth on your nose you should really get looked at.”

“I’ll be sure to do that,” I said, sitting down carefully next to him. “What ingenious devices are you working on now?”

“Ah,” he said, holding up a perforated metal claw-basket, “this little beauty unscrambles eggs. And this,” he held up what appeared to be a plastic cone with a small camera attached, “this will help people hear sign language.”

“Very useful, Ed. I hate it when you can’t understand what the lady standing beside the President is signing.” I grabbed a metal pole with a futuristic disc at the end of it. “What’s this?”

“Be careful! That’s a weed whacker that uses lasers.”

“Wow, that’s some cutting-hedge technology there.” That’s when I heard what sounded like a waterfall coming from his bedroom. “What do you got in there? Sounds like a hydro-electric power convertor.”

“Nope. It’s just a leaking board-up job on my roof, and the insurance company is refusing to pay for it.”

“Spill it, Ed.”

“I had a small fire in there one night when I was working on my fireproof matches. The fire department reacted quickly, but they did damage my roof. So I had an emergency board-up done on the roof in order to protect the covered contents of my home from the elements. My policy covers only contents and I&B. However, the carrier denied my emergency board-up claim and refused to pay that bill due to the fact that there is no building coverage on the policy.”

“Ed,” I said, “you don’t need to invent a policy to protect you, because you already have it.”