THANK YOU DMV!

Two weeks ago, a young guy working the door of a college bar in Athens asked me for my driver’s license when I was there for my eldest daughter’s graduation. He looked at it and said, “this doesn’t look much like you, and it’s expired.” He was right on both counts. The picture was 17 years old, and it had expired on my last birthday. I had been procrastinating getting it renewed for six months.

“True,” I responded, “but I am 61 years old. Do you have any doubts about that?” He gazed at me for a few seconds.

“Not really, but we’re not supposed to accept expired licenses or pictures that don’t look like the person.”

“C’mon son,” I said. “I’m probably older than your father. That’s my 22-year-old daughter you just let in. Are you really going to keep me from joining her?”

Reluctantly, he let me in without me having to bribe him. I shook my head at the mindless bureaucracy; something that has bugged me most of my life. When I got back home the incident spurred me to do what I had been putting off for months and go to the DMV to get a new license—particularly since the deadline for Real ID had just passed and I would need it to fly. More mindless bureaucracy.

My wife having recently done the same thing, I knew from her that people were flooding the DMV offices in North Carolina to have their licenses converted to Real ID. Despite the chipper language on the DMV’s website about making an appointment, they were completely booked everywhere, which meant I had to take my chances as a walk-in after twelve.

After hitting all the DMVs in Charlotte and the surrounding counties (which had lines five blocks long), my wife had finally found one in a small town an hour away where she only had to wait for two hours. So that is where I decided to go. Because my youngest daughter also had an expired license, she went with me.

We arrived at the DMV fifteen minutes before noon and found twenty people in line ahead of us. That did not seem too bad, but there were only two employees on duty, so it took two and half hours for us just to get inside. With nowhere else to go, my daughter and I spent the time talking, which was great since I had not seen much of her during her first year in college.

Most of the people in our line bore the wait with the placid bovine resignation one learns from the occasional brush against the governmental infrastructure. Except for one woman, who complained loudly to the DMV employees every time they opened the door to admit a few more of us. The rest of us shuffled forward docilely, not wishing to anger the bureaucratic gods.

Ironically (I suppose) when she finally did make her way inside, the angry woman did not have the right documents to get whatever it was she needed. As she stomped off, my fellow bovines and I exchanged knowing looks—nothing stings like bureaucratic karma. It does not pay to anger the gods.

But even though I kept it to myself, I felt the same way that she did. I had to take a day off from work to get this done and, unlike her (as I judged from the way she dressed and spoke), I am an especially important person, a lawyer. I should not have to wait in lines like this. I silently cursed the DMV for its mindless bureaucracy, understaffing and “making” me have prideful thoughts about the angry woman.

When we arrived back home with our Real IDs, I looked at my watch and said to my daughter, “well that’s six hours of our lives that we’ll never get back.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she answered. “But we did get to spend it together.”

Ha! She was right. Instead of working another day, I had spent six uninterrupted hours with my daughter. What would I have paid for that privilege if the DMV had not made me do it free of charge? I realized that I should not have been cursing the DMV—I should be thanking it.

So, thank you DMV. I owe you one.