Have Insurance, Will Travel

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To get anywhere, you need a destination, tickets, and insurance. We learned that our kuppah, health plan, offers travel insurance. This made sense, since they have all our medical records.

Or maybe not. The health plan outsources travel insurance to a company that has none of our records.

On the insurer’s website, I entered my particulars: Name, ID number, mobile number. This produced a pop-up: If you are over 70, call this number.

I called and gave them the same particulars: name, ID, mobile. They said someone would call me back.

Which someone did, while I was in the supermarket. I gave her my particulars again, in Hebrew. “Would you like to speak in English?” she asked, in Hebrew. I said, “Sure,” thinking she would continue in English. She did not. “Someone will call you back who speaks English,” she said, in Hebrew, and hung up.

I was not disappointed, because just then I was in delicate negotiations with the butcher over chicken leg quarters. I hoped the next callback would not come while I was checking out. Interrupting checkout to buy insurance would have made the kupa’it, already known for having cows, to have another.

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An hour later, when I was back home, the second person called, the one who was supposed to speak to me in English. She gave her name as Osnat and spoke to me in Hebrew. She took down my particulars once again, then asked for our destination and planned travel dates. (My Hebrew is often halting, but I can whip through my particulars so fast that even Israelis ask me to repeat and slow down. Success is where you find it.)

Besides sounding pleasant, Osnat turned out to be a vocal virtuoso. In our brief exchange, she spoke in three different registers:

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When using OFFICIAL VOICE, people speak more clearly and slowly. The purpose of this voice is to be understood. (In Israel, of course, “slowly” is a relative term.)

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“I need to ask you some questions,” said Osnat, in Hebrew. The first question was what medicines I take and why I take them. I handled this smoothly.

I did the same when she asked, “Are you traveling to get medical treatment?”

But her next question was incomprehensible. “Could you please repeat that?” I asked, in Hebrew.

Osnat switched to slow, heavily-accented English. “Are you traveling to take part in any sports competitions?”

Once I stopped laughing, I said no.

“Now I will tell you some details about the policy,” said Osnat, suddenly switching to BOILERPLATE VOICE. Boilerplate Voice is low and fast. Its purpose is not to make yourself understood, just to be able to say that you said it.

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As Osnat rattled on, I thought of all the insurance contracts I had ever read in my native language. I couldn’t understand a word.

“Will you be sending me a copy of the policy?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “By SMS and email.”

When I got her messages, I Google-translated the first paragraph as follows:

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Then Inbal switched back to OFFICIAL VOICE to ask for my credit card number. That question requires mutual comprehension.

But Osnat had one more vocal surprise. When we were all done, her voice changed again, as she said:

Tevalu, tehenu, veshelo ye’era lachem shum takala!

Have a good time, enjoy yourselves, and may no misfortune befall you!

Lying inert on the page, those words might strike you as a marketer’s throwaway line.  But you had to be there. If you heard Osnat’s actual voice, you would recognize a whole different vocal register:

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HEYMISH VOICE is warm, brimming with empathy, thrumming with vibrato. Osnat suddenly sounded like my favorite Aunt Bertha, only better.

I have encountered surges of unexpected warmth from clerks who till then had acted normal: brusque and impatient. All of a sudden a clinic lab technician might burst out with, “May your urine show no protein and your hemoglobin be amazing!”

I was so impressed by Osnat’s final words that I regretted not getting her email address so I could send her photos of our trip.  Perhaps that would have been too much.

Now that we are insured, all that remains is to pack, take a smartphone to keep up with news and podcasts, in case life gets too calm and pleasant, and some reading material: a book or two, perhaps.

And just in case, the travel insurance policy.

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