DMV Vignettes

New Jersey DMV 1999: driving test
I can barely hear my mother over the sound of torrential rain as I drive to the DMV. It isn't a shower. It isn't a steady rain. It is buckets of water lashing at the car from every direction. Through the stream flowing down the windshield, I see the boy in front of me step out of the passenger side of a microscopic Mazda Miada to take the driver seat from his father. He barely manages to parallel park.

Mr. License Tester Man looks over from under his umbrella to see that I drove a mid-nineties Ford Taurus wagon to the test in that rain. I've already passed the test.

Maryland MVA 2004: changing car registration, driver's license, etc.
I've survived the Prince George's County MVA for several hours before I'm finally paying the bill for the Maryland license, registration, plates, and I don't even know what else.

The tired man behind the desk clearly enunciates, "Two-fourteen, please."

I confidently whip out a ten-dollar bill, thinking, "Wow! That's way cheaper than I thought!"

The tired man looks at the bill in my hand before regarding at me with both pity and disgust: "Two-hundred-fourteen, please."

My response: "Are you serious?" As if the MVA guy was just messing with me.

Being an adult is expensive.

Maryland MVA 2005: new-to-me car registration, though you'd never know it from this conversation.
[Editor's note: two parts of my original name was indeed very Irish, although I don't know why people consistently think "Elizabeth" is Irish.]

"Oh, wow, what an Irish name you have!"

"Yeah."

"That is so nice."

"Thanks."

"This is embarrassing, but could I ask you a favor?"

"Um. Sure."

"Could you show me some of the dancing?"

[totally blank stare]

"Like, Lord of the Dance dancing?"

"Um. I don't know how to do that. That skill didn't come with the name."

Virginia DMV 2007: changing car registration, driver's license, etc.
There's very little required to obtain a Virginia driver's license, but I am nervous about the vision test, because I know I've been having trouble seeing things lately. But vision isn't covered in my health insurance, and I've spent grad school living on a "graduate assistant stipend" that barely covers luxuries like rent and peanut butter.

I feign total confusion when I look in the vision box test thing and can't see anything.

The nicest of nice DMV ladies explains to me that it's a bureaucratic nightmare to get my license back if I fail this test, and she gives me about a dozen guesses at the letters before I get enough of them correct to pass the test.

I make an appointment with an optometrist the next day. He doesn't let me leave his office until he personally makes my glasses. When I get home with my new glasses, I inform Tom that the paint job in our condo is terrible, the picture on our new TV is amazing, and I didn't know how much I missed being able to read street signs.

California DMV 2012: oh, this again.
An exercise in levels of ridiculousness:

1) California gives new residents a mere 10 days--TEN DAYS--to get CA licenses...

2) ...Despite that meager, 10-day window, there are no Saturday or evening hours at the DMV. The best we can do is show up at 7:30 for the 8:00 opening. Bah.

3) There's also no proper queuing system, though a man comes around with a cart straight out of 1953 full of forms.

4) The front desk won't give us a number until we fill out our forms (which we couldn't download online), after which they'll give us a number to sit and wait with said completed forms in hand.

5) No one can actually read: they think Tom is doing a name change. This is partially his parents' fault: they gave him three names that could all be first names or all last names, so Tom has spent his life responding to "Mr. Thomas?" "Mr. Middle Name?" AND "Mr. Last Name?"

6) Further evidence no one can actually read: they try to put all my information through under my original name, even though I specifically point out the whole name change situation and provide every possible form of ID and documentation.

7) There's another woman in California with my exact (current) name with my exact birthday (same day, month, and year). This is ridiculous and a little creepy.

8) We have to take a 36-question, multiple-choice test before they'll give us licenses. It is the most terribly written document I have ever read; the syntax alone gives me heartburn. Tom is just happy that he "beat" me: he answered one question incorrectly; I answered two questions incorrectly.

9) Apparently, you can drive with a dog in the bed of a pickup truck in California, so long as the dog is "properly secured." I'm curious how they define that.

10) They won't give us our official licenses right away--they're sent in the mail from Sacramento. We have to keep our now-hole-punched Virginia licenses as photo ID and the most unofficial-looking scraps of paper as evidence that we have California licenses. What is this, 1999?