Yesterday I went to the DMV. I thought I would be responsible and get a Wisconsin driver's license, since I've lived here almost a year and a half and everything. Plus, my old Ohio one is expired (remember that?).
When I looked at the DMV website to find out what I needed to get a driver's license, I learned that I needed only proof of residency and an out-of-state license that was no more than 8 years expired. So, actually, I still had 7 years and 293 days to procrastinate until I was really in trouble. But I was feeling all responsible, so I skipped the gym and headed straight to the DMV.
I've lived in enough states to know that when you go to a new DMV, it's like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. Except that you do know you're not going to get chocolate, which is a bummer. At this DMV the cherry cordial in my chocolate was that I needed my passport or birth certificate. Never mind the fact it wasn't mentioned on the website (that I could see). I drove the 20 minutes home to retrieve my passport (I was not going to give up on being responsible!) and the 20 minutes back to the DMV, all the while trying not to think about how concerned everyone was about where I was born and what my citizenship status was and how little anyone cared if I could actually operate a car safely.
(Now is where I point out that I have never taken a driving test. I got my first driver's license in Arizona, which required driver's ed OR a driving test. Not both. So I took driver's ed, obviously. I sometimes wonder what the good folks in California, Delaware, Ohio, and now Wisconsin might think about my qualifications for their fine states' issuing me a driver's license based solely on the couple of hours I spent in a teal Pontiac one summer with Deanna and poor Mr. Edwards, whom we tortured relentlessly with our silly giddy fifteen-year-old-ness.)
When I returned, passport in hand, to the Madison DMV, no body bothered to look at my passport. Sure, they noticed I had it with me. But no one bothered to look and see that it was actually mine. I could have brought Baby David's expired one.
Anyway, my whole point is that the DMV made me grouchy.
And I never let the DMV make me grouchy! What was wrong with me?! The employees were perfectly warm and polite, and, except for the passport thing, everything went quite smoothly. Why did the DMV make me grouchy? Because I sure spent the rest of the day feeling grumpier and grumpier, until I finally burst into tears after dinner.
I was concerned.
I simply do not let bureaucracy make me grouchy. I am a military wife. I have lived in Turkey (the Ottoman Empire pretty much invented red tape). I have lived in Turkey as a military wife on a Turkish military base. (That is a triple whammy.) I have transferred credits from one university to another. (Cringe.) I have a son who has been on the no-fly list since he was a baby. I have traveled between countries that don't recognize each other with stacks of papers to get my family in and out. In the Dominican Republic I negotiated through the twists and turns of a barely-functioning bureaucracy in order to help legally marry people who did not legally exist, all in a language I barely understood. Also, Tricare is an integral part of my life. (Shiver.)
A little DMV can't scare me.
I do not let bureaucracy control my emotions. I may roll my eyes, laugh, or sigh with frustration. But it does not get inside me, it does not upset me. (I choose to freak out about other things, like Excel spreadsheets and my kids rolling around on the floors of eating establishments.) So, naturally, my post-DMV grouchiness made me think maybe I'd lost my edge. That I was getting soft.
Then last night I collapsed.
I was sick! The cold I'd been fighting off all week, successfully I had thought, was back with a vengeance. No wonder I was so grouchy. I felt like garbage. I was grumpy because I was ill. It was a relief, in a way. The DMV had not conquered me!
But the common cold has . . . Yuck.
P.S. I cannot talk today. I have no voice. This definitely makes me grouchy. But my kids love it.
P.P.S. My parents are in Switzerland. This does not make me grouchy. But it does make me a little envious.
P.P.P.S. I didn't shed a tear giving up my Ohio license, unlike what I predicted. Because I didn't have to give it up. They just punched a hole in it and handed it back to me. Easy peasy. Is that too much to ask, you meanie states who insist on emotionally scarring those of us who NEED to hang on to our old licenses??? (That's right, I'm talking to you, California, Delaware, and Ohio. Tisk, tisk.)
