Good Girls Don’t (But The Cloud Thinks I Do)

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Good Girls Don’t (But The Cloud Thinks I Do)

I have always put waaay too much stock in being considered a Good Girl. When I was a kid and my older siblings got in trouble with my parents, I was famous for swooping in from wherever I happened to be to say, “But I’m a good girl, right? I’m a good girl?” which was exactly what nobody needed at the time. That my brother and sister will still allow me in the same zip code is them is a testament to their forgiving natures.

You’d think that with my encroaching Wise Tribal Elder status, I’ve outgrown the need for everyone’s good opinion. It’s just not so, as proven by my recent foray into an online health survey.

Our health insurer dangled the survey as an incentive – answer these questions before December 31, get some money into your health spending account. My husband reminded me to take the survey for months, but I kept finding better things to do, like clean the gasket of the washing machine and check to see if the winter rains brought any activity to the rat traps in the crawl space. I just didn’t feel like taking the damn thing, okay?

But the promise of some extra money to spend on new eyeglasses finally won out and I logged in a couple weeks ago. Page after page of questions: activity levels? Stress levels? Number of hours sleeping at night? Tobacco use? I stopped there for a minute to ponder. I do not think that bumming the occasional cigarette on Saturday nights when I lived in Germany in the ‘80s counts as tobacco use; it was just cultural assimilation. I checked a box and moved on. I lost focus a couple of times, I will admit it, and looked at Facebook. I may have balanced my checkbook mid-survey, and done some online Christmas shopping.

Finally, though, I was presented with a summary of all my answers, which I skimmed in 0.92 seconds, and hit “Submit.” Immediately a screen popped up with helpful suggestions of things I should do to improve my health right away: “Stop using tobacco products!”

What the hell?

I tabbed a page back to find that I had evidently checked a box that said I was a user of Smokeless Tobacco products. That’s right, our health insurer now thinks I keep a little pinch between my cheek and gums.

Look, I admitted right here on the blog once that I have indeed tried chaw, and was surprisingly adept at the spitting. But that was in 1984 and it was, like, once.

It is not ideal for your health insurer to think you’re a user of tobacco products. But if I’m honest, the real driver of my distress was the thought of someone, somewhere, reviewing my file in the gigantic Data Cloud where all privacy is lost, and thinking, Oh, Nancy chews tobacco. Gross.

No! No! I don’t! I’m a good girl! I’m a good girl?

So far I’ve made three phone calls and sent two emails to the health insurance company, to no avail. The promised health spending money has landed in my account, but it gives me little comfort. All I will use those new glasses for is peering at customer service phone numbers so I can continue to press my case as a non-chaw user.

On the other hand, “Give up the dip” may be the easiest New Year’s resolution I’ve ever made.