This Saturday, lads and lassies, it was made clear to your Uncle Jimbo that his driver's license had expired. It had in fact expired in March, (this being May) but due to Uncle J's patented wooly-headedness, escaped his attention at least until the clerk at NCA pointed it out when he tried to write a check.
They let me have the stuff anyway, after I proved to have an unexpired credit card. Strange how these things work. And as the Fates had decreed, my license was expired. An ex-license. It was too much to hope that the Department of Motor Vehicles would be open on Saturday, but I drove down there anyway, staying precisely at 54.5 mph, which got me a lot of strange looks, especially by the two cops that blew past me at 70 plus.
Sure enough, the DMV was locked tighter than a drum, and the only people in the parking lot seemed to be engaging in a surreptitious affair, or concluding a drug deal, or possibly both. Neither alternative encouraged me to closer examination, so I split, and spent all Sunday driving very carefully.
Monday AM the phone got me up at 7:45, me aged Mums desiring a little early-morning advice about a few personal matters and her computer. Mums ought to know that chatting me up that early results in someone who is agreeable to the point of idiocy, and who may appear to be coherent, but in reality has no idea what he's talking about, and a large part of the time will have no lasting memory of the conversation whatsoever.
However, last night I had pasted a large sheet of yellow paper on the bathroom mirror and had written on it in large, friendly red letters the following device:
DO IT TODAY.
and it motivated me to action, and also to remember that what I had just told Mums about her floppy drive was, to put it delicately, a load of the old codswallop, which is to say not terribly helpful. On my way out the door, I rang her up and advised restraint.
I then drove, very, very carefully, down to the DMV, which in a trendsetting move, was actually open. I strolled in with my expired driver's license, and was grimly told to fill out a form, and that'll be twelve dollars, please. The form required that I divulge several items of a personal nature, my social security number, address, date of birth, etc. I was doing OK with all this until I got to the section that wanted to know what I look like.
Eye color? Green, somewhat bloodshot, but green without question. Possibly hazel, but green was what I'd always put down. I hadn't changed height, so that line got 5' 11" as it always had. Weight was a bit of a stumper, I didn't a scale with me, nor had I one at home, but the last time I remember being weighed, I rang in at 180 or thereabouts.
Color of hair was problematic, my last license said I had brown hair, which I don't remember writing down, and while I didn't have a mirror, it seemed that my hair had always been brownish-red, so I wrote "brown".
I passed the multiple-choice test. I do not know how I passed it but I did, and learned that you can be wholly ignorant of the traffic code of the State of California, and with a little careful guessing and a couple of fortuitous coin flips, you can get a driver's license. Still, I got three questions wrong, and that was the maximum allowed.
I took my completed test, and my form, to a desk, and was treated to an eye exam. Somehow I managed to pass that one, too, though I had to have a second try at a B that looked suspiciously like an 8. The woman who graded my test and let me squeak by on the eye exam took a look at my form of personal information, and then a long look at me. She then got up on her desk, and peered over the counter at my midsection. Stifling laughter, she went off to confer with several associates, each of whom came over to check me out, one at a time. These ladies were speaking Mandarin chinese, of which I understand a little, and I caught the phrase "self-deluded Caucasian idiot".
My original lady came back, and suggested that perhaps we should adjust a few of the items on my form.
Truth compelled me to answer in the affirmative. Perhaps "gray" was slightly more accurate these days.
I was again compelled to answer that 200 was more likely.
I did, and regret to report that I now stand only 5'10 and 3/4 inches, in spite of having a good hair day. Each of my items was changed, my thumbprint and picture were taken, and the man who strode into the DMV a svelte, tall, brownhaired fellow with an expired driver's license, left rotund, prematurely graying, and somewhat shorter in stature, but with a legitimate place on California's roads. My new license will be sent to me in the mail, sometime in the next month, I'm told.
My testing lady observed, while stifling a giggle, that I had managed to get as many parts of my personal info wrong as I had the test questions, and while that says something to me, I'm not really sure that I like it.
Copyright 1996 James M. Putnam, All Rights Reserved