if you donate one organ this summer, make sure it's this one...
If you wondered where the old bureaucrats from the Soviet Union went I found them. They work at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) where I stood in two lines to get to stand in line. If that makes sense please explain it to me because I�m too obtuse to figure it out. I stood in five lines at the DMV by the end of the two hours of my visit. It was ridiculous.
When I took out my notebook to write down that I was waiting in line to wait in line a note I wrote my cousin during Mass on Easter fell out of my notebook and was returned to me by the person standing two spaces behind me. Unfortunately the note says, �Dan � my hemorrhoids are killing me.� At first I wondered why the person behind me was laughing but when I got the note I realized that my attempt to disrupt church had come full circle and the joke was on me.
A quick thinking person would have said, �Oh, my name�s not Dan but I�m sorry your sphincter is bothering you.� Normally I am at the top of my game but today I wasn�t. This brings the score up to Dan � 10, Christopher � 2.
I made a big show of being uncomfortable every time that person looked in my direction for the rest of the time I was there.
The highlight of my experience wasn�t that I got to pay one-hundred-six dollars for a drivers license but that someone I have never met but will always admire paid in quarters in his words to, �piss them off.� I shook his hand not because he paid in quarters but because he did it to be an ass and didn�t have the decency to roll the quarters.
The lines to wait in the line weren�t the most ridiculous lines of my day but the ones where things actually happened were the ones that made you want to pull out your hair. At the end of the first �action� line there was a little Asian lady who said, �Oh, I�m sorry we�re closed. He he.� I didn�t say a word to her but I glared at her until her will to be sarcastic was broken. I didn�t break eye contact either I just kept pouring all of my contempt for the inefficiency of the municipal government of wherever I end up through my eyes at her. I know you�re thinking that it was rude of me to do this but I could have said something and that would have been much worse.
That line was free. The next line cost me forty dollars. Margaret Chou Wannabe gave me the wrong paperwork and I was going to have to wait in line again to get the correct paperwork and then wait another line to turn the correct paperwork in. I said, �Oh, no. That�s okay � you can go get the paperwork for me and I�ll fill it out right here.� �Sir, it doesn�t work that way�� �It does today�� I replied and continued, �Have you heard of Christine Butler?� He said, �No, I haven�t�� �I can do an impression for you if you want to make this difficult.� And that was that because no one wants a can of Christine Butler opened up on their ass.
The next line after that was the vision test. This cost me sixty dollars and I read one line of numbers (which I did wrong being dyslexic and tired), one line of depth perception and a fun round of �what is in my peripheral vision.� Sixty dollars.
The final two lines where the ones where I got my picture taken and then the line to get the actual license. When I went to sign my name I couldn�t remember how it was spelled and had to go really, really slow to get it right and the second time I had to sign my name I started with a C and kind of made this jumble of lines and then an S and a similar jumble of lines for my last name. This I had to do over, twice. Then Attila (who was taking the pictures) says to me, �You could smile, it wouldn�t hurt you.� I said, �Picking up the pace around here wouldn�t hurt anyone either, would it?� Which got a loud �Uhn huhn� from someone waiting behind me.
Then I got to wait in line for the license itself, which didn�t take too long except for asking for proof that the license was indeed my license. I stuck my hand out and gave her, �You�re not funny either� look.
I can think of a lot better things to do with one hundred- ix dollars than legally operate an automobile.
Next week I get to go back and register the car.
