I just paid my car insurance bill. It makes no sense to me that I pay $70 a month to protect my 1992 Sundance, but you aren't supposed to drive without insurance.

Insurance to me seems like the biggest scam in the world. I don't really understand anything about premiums or deductibles, but it works something like this: you pay so much for certain coverage and then if anything bad ever happens to you, your insurance will take care of it.

They have car insurance and medical insurance and life insurance, but did anyone ever think to add drunk insurance? Based on my drunken antics this weekend, I really think it's something they should look into inventing.

This is how it would work: your premium would be assessed based on how much you drink, and how liable you are to act stupid when drunk. Then, you'd pay this insurance company and every time you did or said something stupid while you were totally wasted, they'd take care of it for you.

If you threw up on your friend's oriental rug, drunk insurance will pay for a replacement. If you made out with your best friend's boyfriend, drunk insurance will patch things up. If you mistook a houseplant for a toilet, drunk insurance has you covered. As long as you pay the premium, you'll never be held responsible for anything you did when you were drunk. Drunk insurance will provide those of us who don't know when to say no to that next shot that a reasonable person would advise against. Drunk insurance would make drinking fun again.

So why the hell hasn't anyone thought of this before? I'd buy into a drunk insurance policy, and I'm not nearly as bad as that one guy. However, no matter how good or bad of a drunk you are, you'll probably never be able to buy drunk insurance in the near future simply because college kids are too much of a liability. We're like, the equivalent of a lung cancer patient who smokes three packs a day. You know we're gonna get rip-roarin' wasted, so why bother?

It's a great little fantasy, though . . . not being held responsible for anything you said or did when drunk. Unfortunately, rationale rears its ugly head here and says maybe you shouldn't have gotten that disgustingly drunk in the first place. Maybe those fuzzy memories of last weekend will be insurance enough that it won't happen again . . . but probably not.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Mar. 3 2005.