If you were with me for the first part of this journey, I am
sorry to have left you hanging. I know you have already battled through the
“proving my identity” part of this tale and wanted to see me through to its
fruition: me with a new license.
I did not leave you waiting for no reason at all. I think
you could not appreciate the next part of my journey until you had, in fact,
spent some time waiting for it.
To wait: to
be available
or in readiness.
You, reader, had the privilege
of waiting in the comfort of your own environment. I had no such comfort as I
waited… and so my tale continues.
When the voter’s card got the DMV lady’s approval, she gave
me a number. That in and of itself seemed like a good thing. I had a number! I
was approved! I passed go!
That is how they suck you in. They give you a ticket with a number. I’m not
sure how this small piece of paper has such power over us humans, but it does.
It does. I held my ticket and rounded the corner into the waiting room. This
was when I had my first glimpse of what lay in store for me… but it was only a
glimpse.
There were rows and rows of chairs that were, no doubt,
picked for their discomfort and lack of appeal. Each chair was occupied. There was a counter for paper work, complete
with forms and pens that were attached to the counter so they would not walk
away with any of the tens (Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Billions?) of people
in that room. There was very little air circulating. It felt like I was either in a movie about a
town that was lost in time, or a waiting room in a third world country. There
were teenagers sitting all over the floor while waiting for their driving test.
There were babies crying in every corner of the room. There were old men and
women, young men and women, middle-aged men and women, and children. This
particular abyss discriminated against no race, religion, sex, or age group.
I do not like crowds, and I never have. (I was the one
teenage girl that hated the mall.) But my feelings of animosity toward crowds have
vastly intensified over the years. When I walk into a crowded room now, I feel
like I suddenly become a magnet whose polarity has been reversed; I am unable
to get close to the crowd, and each time I try I am bounced away from the
crowd. I must get away… I have no choice. I viewed my fate. It was no
good.
When I walked in, someone got up from their chair and left.
I looked around, and no floor-sitter or hall-stander went for the chair. I
decided I would go for that chair. I tried to make myself as small as possible
and wedged myself into the small area that contained that chair. I sat down.
Let me try to explain the truly painful activity that was
sitting in these chairs. These chairs must not have been made with the human
form in mind. These chairs must have
been built to seat a far-away race that has a completely different style of
sitting and completely different joints that bend in unusual ways. They seem to
be perfect for causing pain in almost every body part that touches the chair. Perhaps
these chairs were created to punish uncooperative prisoners, giving incentive
to the inmate who knew that with cooperation came more comfortable furniture.
The
chair was not comfortable, but at least I had a place to rest and was not in
the way of anyone else - except those on my right, my left, in front, and in
back of me (and that was a far smaller number than if I had to stand). There was no good place to stand. The room
was filled with chairs. Filled. So those who were standing in any place other
than around the writing counter were completely in the way and were an
annoyance to anyone who tried to move anywhere.
I suppose some of those good people had already sat in the chairs and discovered
their discomfort and opted for the lesser of two evils. I chose my evil and
would live or die with it.
The DMV also sucks you in with the light up board and the
numbers being called out. You hear and see numbers. (Kudos to the DMV for
choosing to reach out to both audio learners and visual learners! That will be
the one nice thing that I say about the DMV.) You see people getting up. You see movement. You begin to be sucked into
the “waiting abyss.” However, when you see people move and leave, you do not
have all the information. You do not know that the group that is moving has
already spent hours, days, months in this waiting abyss. You only start asking
for the information when you have gone well past your tolerance level for these
types of situations. Everyone is
fidgeting. Everyone has that annoyed look on their face. There are people who blindly came with their
children thinking it would not take too long and now their children are yelling. There are people
who no longer care to be polite, and they have stretched out their legs and are
causing great discomfort to all around them.
There are people who look like they are on a reality show called
“American Loser.” There are some real contenders for the big win on that show
here.
Who are these people? They live near me? I might need to
consider moving after this. But that would involve getting a new license… Forget
it.
Normally, an experience like this would send you running. In
the DMV scenario, you are stuck. They sucked you in with their information
line, your ticket with a number on it, their fancy light-up number board, and their
automated voice calling out the numbers.
They also trick you by not having one set of sequential numbers. If the numbers were sequential, you would have
an accurate idea of how long you would be stuck there, and then they would have
anarchy on their hands!
Each number group signifies what you are there for. For
example, all the teenagers taking the driving test might have a number in the
400s. A person getting a duplicate
license might have a number in the 200s.
When you are an innocent (dumb) lamb sitting there, you hear a sequence
of numbers announced like this: “10, 10 at counter 1. 44, 44 at counter 14., 999, 999 at counter 2, etc.” You have no idea
how long a wait you really have until your number is called. Even if you hear
the number right before your number, you may still have hours to wait before
they get back to your number series!
When I reached that place where I felt I had sat there too
long, I asked my neighbor how long she had been waiting. She said, “1 ½ hours.”
I couldn’t believe that! Then the gal behind me said they had been there for 3
hours. THREE HOURS? Sitting in those horrible chairs that were trying to wreck
my back and make me cry?! At that point,
I wanted to leave. I had only been there for an hour. But I couldn’t leave. I needed a license.
This was the only day I had no kids and no plans; I had to stay. I had to stay
right there in one of my personal versions of hell.
I looked at the man next to me. He was an older gentleman,
and his face had the look that said, “I am going to die right here.” I tried to
think positively: the day would end eventually, and I would have my license,
right? Or maybe the world would end
first…
As I sat there hoping for Armageddon, or something that
would free us from this DMV web we had been caught up in, I had another moment
of panic. I started this adventure at 2:00. If it took more than 3 hours, this place
would close before I could get my turn! I would have to do this all over
again! NOOOOOO!
At the point when I was about to stand up and scream, “We
are NEVER getting out of here! NEVER!” I
noticed a sign that said they were open until 6:00 on Tuesdays. This was
Tuesday. I continued on my path. I
listened to babies cry, prayed for more air circulation, tried to maneuver in
my chair again to find a less uncomfortable position, and hoped for Jesus’
return.
After what seemed like days, I decided living on the edge
with no license at all might be a fun new adventure. I am a good driver. I could probably go for months and months
before I was discovered. As I gathered my things to begin my new life on the
edge, they finally called my number. I got to go to counter 14. It only took
two minutes at the counter to get everything squared away.
So, 3 hours and 2 minutes after I began the journey into the
waiting abyss, I had a backache, a new appreciation for my roomy house with
comfortable furniture, and my temporary license.
