Growing Old at the DMV

They say that living to a ripe old age is a blessing. But when you do it while standing on line at the DMV, you begin to see things from an entirely different perspective. Suddenly, the expression "something to look forward to" can mean something as mundane as seeing a DMV employee get back from lunch to take care of huge line. And the emotional impact of the simple word "next" can bring tears of joy trickling down your cheeks -- you'd think it was written by the poet Yusef Komunyakaa.

Probably the most frightening phrase you can hear at the DMV is, "It's a clerical error." This phrase can mean almost any imaginable horrible thing you can conjure up. It can mean that you'll have to come back and waste another day. It can mean that you'll have to retake the road test you already passed because your records have been misplaced. Or it can mean that due to a misspelling of your name, you're now on the FBI's most wanted list. And it's not even proper decorum to get angry about such things. You see, it's not really their fault -- making errors is part of the system.

But things at the DMV have improved somewhat over the years. On some "lines," instead of standing for hours, as was the case in years gone by, you now take a number, sit down on a bench and watch a large electronic board with a confusing array of numbers. Every now and then, someone yells "Bingo!"

Having spent my share of time at the DMV, I've found that in addition to spending about seventy percent of your time waiting on lines, you spend about ten percent looking for the right line and about fifteen percent taking directions from security personnel who couldn't give you clear enough directions to find the ocean on a cruise ship.

My first line, on one particular occasion, was the "picture" line. That's where everyone "fixes up" and smiles for a picture that'll never be seen by anyone except cops. And these pictures never come out right. Anyone who actually looks like the picture on his or her driver's license is too ill to drive.

My next line was so crowded, one guy fainted. But no one noticed it because he couldn't fall down till six people got off.