Changing Rules at the DMV

I usually renew my driver’s license by mail which I did this year as well but you can’t renew a handicap parking permit by mail for some obscure reason known only to those who work for the Department of Motor Vehicles who have screws loose in their heads. People who need handicap parking hangtags aren’t known for their physical endurance and ability to be packed inside a sardine can with a hundred plus people or for waiting in line for a ticket to enter their precious room full of hard plastic chairs, then sit for another hour or two for them to get called up to the counter. I don’t use my handicap parking tag often but when I need it, I need it so I have to play by their rules.

Last week I made my first attempt to go to the DMV. I got a couple of blocks from home when I realized I’d left my cell phone at home on the charger. What should I do? The side of my brain that wants to live dangerous had a debate with the sensible side. She said: I’ve lived better than half my life without a cell phone attached to my body. What’s one more day? I didn’t listen to what the sensible side mumbled back about random flat tires and traffic accidents. I grabbed “danger” by the throat and kept my car headed toward the DMV. 

When I got there, I looked for the red sign on the wall that tells what number they called last but I couldn’t find it. I found out why when I was herded by a bank of computers where we were supposed to register. Great. I’m computer literate. I can do this, I thought. Wrong. It wanted to know your cell phone number so they can send you a text when it’s time for you to get called up to the desk to do your business. That explained the missing red sign on the wall. No cell phone, no way to advance forward. There are so many things wrong with that but it’s enough to say that I had to tuck my tail between my legs and pick my way out of the building. I felt like an antique person with a flip phone...not that there's anything wrong with that.

My second attempt to go to the DMV was on Monday morning. I figured I’d start early in the week, giving me plenty of days to get it right. I had my cell phone handy, I’d even written its number on a slip of paper because, truly, how many people have their own number memorized? I can repeat every landline number I’ve had in my entire life---which isn’t that hard to do considering there’s only been two---but all I remember about my cell number is it contains the numbers of a popular interstate highway. But this time I headed out of town to drive to a DMV twelve minutes northwest, in the middle of apple orchard country where those who work at the DMV likely all speak Spanish as well as English. I checked the computer to make sure the branch hadn’t been closed and I lucked out. 

Speaking of closing up branches, my bank is switching over to one of those “digitally enhanced branches.” Which means they will no longer cash checks or allow you to withdraw or deposit cash. So what the hell are they going to do because they aren’t closing the place? There is still a full service bank in the town where I drove to get my handicap parking permit renewed. But I’m not going to drive unplowed country roads in the winter to get there nor in the fall when migrant workers explode the population of this speck of a town in the middle of nowhere. Growing up, no one would let their wives or daughters go there in the fall for fear they’d be raped at knife point. It’s utterly ridiculous to harbor a race-based fear for so many years but isn’t that what drives all stereotypes that are the root cause of systemic racism? One woman back in the early ‘50s had that experience and a whole group of innocent people were besmirched as a result. Afterward, white high school boys would go up there on a Saturday night looking for trouble and if they found it, guess which group got a slap on the hand while the others went to the county lock up. Jeez, did I get off topic.

Anyway, when I walked into the Rural Town DMV I took a paper ticket from a machine like you do at the meat counter at the grocery store and waited for my number to show up on the red sign. There were only 35 people ahead of me. I was in and out in a flash and while I was there I learned all about how the guy across from me left his short fuse at the restaurant he’d just left, and I learned if you ask an 18 month old girl to tell you what her grandpa’s tractor sounds like she’ll blow bubbles and make adorable sound-effects while putting the "tractor" through gears I’m pretty sure it doesn’t even have. She had our whole row laughing. Conversations like that wouldn’t happened at my local DMV where everyone is staring at their cell phones. At the counter I also learned that the state is talking about changing the rules and letting us renew handicapped parking permits online. Hooray! ©

The Airman, the Doctor and the Widow with a Driver’s License

At the gas station this week I saw a guy who was wearing an Air Force uniform, rare in my part of the world. I was guessing he was a recruiter making the rounds of the high schools and if so, they picked a good one. He was tall, dark and handsome---like Tom Cruise in Top Gun---and he carried himself with the kind of swagger that comes from knowing who you are and what you can do. I guess Tom isn’t all that tall but why spoil my illusions with facts? The point is my younger self would have followed Mr. Recruiter anywhere if he’d have given me the slightest encouragement. Surface-to-air missiles shooting at me? No problem as long as you’re there, too. Now, I just wanted to sit Mr. Recruiter down in front of a painting easel and preserve his killer smile on canvas. “Let me get that door for you, ma`am,” he said making me bask in the warmth of his brown eyes. Sometimes it pays to look like a weak old woman. “Thank you, sir,” I replied and I wanted to add, Could I interest you in sitting for a portrait? God, if I didn’t have an imagination, I’d have no life at all!

I saw my orthopedic doctor this week, too, with the hopes that he’d cut me loose from post-surgery restrictions. No such luck. I have to go back in a week to see if the shot he put in my shoulder joint relieves the pain I’m getting in my bicep. If it does significantly, I’ll get a shot of “super gel” that should give me relief for a year or more. At least now I am cleared for picking up things under ten pounds. It’s a start, though I still can’t bench press. I don’t know if that’s a joke my doctor is making or he actually thinks gray-haired old ladies like me are into body building, but he makes a point of telling me that every time I see him. Fortunately, by nightfall the day I got the test shot, my pain level had fallen from a seven to a one which means the super gel junk will be worth the $500 out of pocket cost. Yeah, team! 

My driver’s license this year had to be renewed in person at the Department of Motor Vehicles and I was really sweating the experience. My eyes have been bothering me all winter and I suspect the cataract the doctor, last summer, said wasn’t big enough to get removed will be when I see him next month. It’s been a lot of years since I was required to renew my license in person, rather than by mail, and when the lady at the DMV checked my eyes I couldn’t read the first two letters to save my soul. Oh, shit! I said to myself and when I use the ‘S word’ you know I’m really upset. But then I realized I could see the rest of the letters in the line and I rattled them off, presumably with enough rattled correctly because I passed the test. I must have passed the ‘racial profiling’ test, too, because they didn’t ask me to show proof of citizenship like the renewal form that came in the mail said I had to bring along. 

Lines at the DMV are notorious for being long and the process can eat up an hour or two so I brought along a book. I picked one from my library based on two factors and two alone. It had to be light weight and it had to have big print because I didn’t want to strain my eyes. The book I grabbed was one I evidently had for a college course on theology or philosophy that I took back in the ‘70s. I could almost deny I ever read it but it was filled with passages underlined in yellow with a generous amount of notes in the margins written in my hand writing. One passage went like this: 

“Self-knowledge, so universally praised as the most valuable, remains worse than useless if it is based solely on the study of one’s own inner experiences; it must be balanced by an equally intensive study of Field 3, through which we learn to know ourselves as others know us. This point is too often overlooked.” (E.F. Schumacher)

The chapter goes on to talk about how we are unaware of the “swing of our pendulums.” Our mind’s eye edits out what we think is contradictory in ourselves and we think we are showing ourselves to the world in a clear message. It gives a great example to illustrate the point; if we take 50 photos of ourselves we’ll throw out the bad ones forgetting, of course, that others see all our states of facial expression, not just the ones we deem are the best. Same with our personalities. Others see it all---the good, the bad and everything in between, but we don't don't like to acknowledge that.

Which gets me back to Mr. Recruiter. What did he see when he opened the door for me? He was in uniform which dictated he had to present himself with the decorum of an officer. Was that all that was on his mind? Or did he think he’d get into the gas station faster if he helped me with the door? Did his mind wander to a grandmother he doesn’t visit often enough? E.F. Schumacher may think it makes a difference how he saw me but, to me, if a smile from a stranger can brighten up my day and fire up my imagination, I could care less if he thought I looked and sounded like a gray tree frog during mating season. ©