In the "there has got to be a better way of doing this" category of life experiences, renewing a drivers license must be high on the list. I spent 90 minutes yesterday at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to have them check my vision and have me affirm that I didn't have any mental impairment that would keep me from driving safely (didn't admit to my shoe fetish), take my right index fingerprint, and have me sign a piece of paper. Of course, the clerk inadvertently had me sign the form for a Joshua Somebody, which luckily I noticed before I left, and we eventually got that all straightened out after I showed my passport to prove that I'm not Joshua Anybody. The strange and quite annoying thing is that I still don't have an actual current license since they now mail it to you instead of creating it on the premises. Instead I have a large piece of paper that I'm supposed to keep in my wallet until my new one arrives. A friend told me today that this is because of problems with DMV employees creating fake I.D.s to sell when the laminating machine was on the premises. That's not very comforting in these post-9/11 days of Patriot Acts and fingerprinting.
The fun part was when the DMV agent asked whether I wanted to keep my weight at the same number as my old license and I said yes, even though I weigh 15 pounds (okay, 20 pounds) more than the weight on my license. Did I commit some kind of illegal act? Fraud? I answered the question truthfully: I really DO want to keep my weight at the same number as my license, but haven't been successful in my desire. I wonder how many licenses accurately reflect the weight of their holder. Does yours?
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