We live in a world of precariously balanced paranoia and caution, mistrust and fear, as evidenced by the fact that you can purchase insurance for just about anything you desire, anything you’re afraid to lose. Home insurance is typical. So is health insurance in its various forms. Car insurance, or at the very least liability insurance, is a given. Life insurance, with its misleading name, is a popular choice. Many people protect their belongings from the insurance elements with fire, earthquake, tornado, hail, flood, drought and so on.

They safeguard their business interests with bonding or fidelity insurance and throw credit insurance in for good measure. And in the event of a defective real estate or car title, there’s title insurance. For ships and everything on them, there’s marine insurance. Movers get moving insurance, and renters get renter’s insurance. You can insure your piano, your computer, your cell phone. Dancers’ and models’ legs are insured; pianists’ fingers; Beyoncé’s hair. In fact, a whole slew of policies have been taken out on behalf of body parts: an artist’s eyes, a winemaker’s nose, a wine taster’s mouth, Mark McGuire’s ankle, complete with a very specific definition of which tendons and ligaments were included in said area.

Naturally, insurance policies like to keep things complicated. They vary from place to place: Provo insurance companies and options are different from Orem choices. Worse than that, they come with so many exclusions that it’s very rare you can collect on everything you anticipated or can even come close to getting your money back. Yet somehow none of us quite feel comfortable without it.