The curious case of Son 2's insurance

A few days ago I got a call from Son 2. His employer is rolling out paid life insurance as a benefit for everyone. He realizes that he doesn't really need life insurance: he's 24 and has no dependents, so there's no urgency. But his company is paying for it, so he figured he'd take advantage while he could.

This means naming a beneficiary. Whom to choose? He's not married, and has no children. And when he called me, he said he'd decided to list me because Why not? and so could I please give him my Social Security number?

Umm, ... sure, I guess so. He added a couple more remarks to fill the empty space in the conversation, but they just made no sense. 

"I figured you'd be sure to have all those numbers handy." Yes, of course. In fact not only do I know my own SSN, but I know Wife's by heart as well. And I've written down yours and your brother's. I could find them if you want.

"I also thought of listing my brother because he's the only other member of the family who's working right now." Wait—did he really mean because, or did he mean although? "But I can't call him at work because they don't allow it." And I guess you couldn't wait till this evening. 

I tried to explain that I have all of these numbers, so really he could pick any of the four of us. I even made a joke of how many times I'd had to fill out Wife's SSN on this or that medical form, so of course I've got it memorized! He laughed and never mentioned Wife in his reply. He wanted my SSN.

I gave it to him, but I also wonder why he asked me for it? 

Getting a life insurance policy when you are 24 is like dropping a single quarter into a slot machine: probably you'll never see the quarter again, but there is a very slim chance of a payoff. In this case his employer is paying for the policy, so the "quarter" is free. Why select me as the recipient of the (highly unlikely) payoff?

You could reply Why not? But my answer to that is that of the four of us, the one who is always short of money is Wife. She's the one who cannot budget. (Though I'm starting to wonder about Son 1 as well, in that regard. But that's for another time.) She's the one who always thinks it's imperative she buy this or that ... things that cooler heads know she will never in her life use. And it's not like she keeps these opinions a secret. I'm sure she has told both boys at great length about how thin and stretched her finances are.

So in the absence of any other criteria, a person could be forgiven for imagining that if one of her sons were to drop a quarter in a slot machine, and if (further) he himself were unable to profit from the payout (if any), then he might let her have it instead because she seems to be so chronically in need.

That's why I made a point to tell Son 2 that I had memorized Wife's SSN. My thought was that if he had wanted to list her but didn't have her information, I'd let him know that I had it and that I would happily give it to him. 

He ignored the bait.

And so I am left trying to understand why. I can see several possibilities, but they all boil down to his being fed up with Wife one way or another. 

• He might be fed up with her financial irresponsibility. Or rather, strictly speaking he might not know exactly what she spends her money on. But he has surely heard her many times on the phone complain about having no money, and about the allegedly-shoestring budget I leave her on.
• At the same time, I know that he knows that what I agreed to pay her in alimony is more than the State would have required; because when we were in the process of separating he told me that she had complained to him that her lawyer had pointed out this precise fact to her. He may not also know that I am still making payments when I don't have to (since these days my salary = 0), but he has probably guessed. No doubt he heard her panic several times last year about her assumption that the payments would dry up any day, and yet here we are. So yes, he has probably figured it out.
• He might be fed up with her general fecklessness, and figure that if she did get a surprise payout she'd never really notice the difference. It would go to some stupid and pointless expense or other, and be forgotten rather than appreciated.
• Or he might be fed up with her at an emotional level. 
• On the one hand it's true that when he was little (and even when he was a teenager) Son 2 went to great lengths to act as a parent for Wife. 
• On the other hand he has also gotten very tired of her. I remember one evening, over a holiday when he was home from Durmstrang, when he lit into her with "Can you hear yourself?" For five minutes he went on in a loud voice, squashing any of her attempts to reply, and itemizing all of her horrible behaviors that evening. [I looked to see if I ever wrote about that in this blog, but I can't find any account of it ... just the indirect reference here.]
• So for all I know it's possible that by now he has more or less written her out of his consciousness at any but the most superficial level, so that she simply no longer registers for him.

I really don't know what to think. But after my phone call a couple of days ago, I did think about this post here, and part of my mind wondered if I should see the current situation as vindication.

Or more likely I'm just overthinking the whole thing.

Another possibility is that strictly speaking I can't rule out the idea that Son 2 wanted my SSN for some complex form of identity theft, in which case his choice of me rather than Wife or Son 1 takes on a whole new dimension. But at an emotional level I don't feel like that's likely ....