ArcaMax

My wife and I just bought a house. The house we sold is in a city, just a three-minute drive from District Court. If you beat the murder rap, you can walk to my house in about 20 minutes. There's a methadone clinic a 10-minute walk away, too. Many clients of the court are also customers at the methadone clinic. We live in between the two. It's an itchy feeling sometimes.

We're moving to a suburb. We'll park in our own driveway, not on the street, and I will never again find a used syringe in my front yard.

Small stuff. I'm sure the constant bake sales in our new town will be just as annoying as the sound of gunfire where we live now.

Anyway, the new house, she is bought, and we haven't moved in yet, but we need a new water heater because the one that came with the new house should be called a "water lukewarmer" and not a "water heater."

So, we had a plumber come to the house, and he gave us three options. I'll list them in order of price.

For $4,900, we get the British crown jewels. Hot water and plenty of it. We do not know how it works, but it's "tankless," and no one knows where the hot water stays until we shower.

For $2,900, we get a less expensive version of the $4,900 model. They promised us it would wear out fairly quickly and supply us with maybe half the hot water we need. We do not know how it works. It's more thankless than tankless and doesn't seem strong enough to do the job

For $1,900, we get a water heater that looks a lot like the one in our last house. It'll wear out in a few years, but it makes hot water. We do not know how it works.

Or we can rent a hot water heater and pay by the month, and when it breaks, the people we rent it from will give us a new one at no additional charge. It's worry-free, but it's a monthly bill, and can a couple really say they're Americans if they don't own everything in their suburban home? In the city we're leaving, a lot of people rent their furniture, which is one of the ways you can tell they're poor. I was once in a rental place that had a rent-to-own deal on engagement rings.

"It's the greatest thing ever," a buddy of mine said. "You get engaged, you rent the ring. You break up, you quit making the payments, and they come get the ring back. You don't have to see her again."

The last option is to go without hot water, like cave dwellers. I'm saving that option for when the civil war starts and there is no running water because the water plant is in the hands of "rebel fighters" who ain't strong on engineering.

And I guess that makes the decision. If there might be a civil war in the future, I want to take boiling hot showers from now until "The People's Army" takes over and nothing works anymore. Here's the $4,900. Hook up the illusion of forever happiness in America. It's the only thing I've ever owned.

To find out more about Marc Dion, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.