This morning I celebrated my mom’s birthday by spending three hours at the DMV to get a North Carolina Driver’s License. This DMVodyssey actually began two days ago, when I realized that we would have to retake the tests before getting a license. I spent the day feverishly reading the handbook and trying to remember the exact distance you should be from the curb when parallel parking. Then yesterday when we started off on this intrepid task, we realized quickly that we had no idea where we were going, having forgotten to look up the address. We decided that we’d definitely seen signs for it around, so got comfortably lost for about an hour, when we finally realized that the signs we’d seen were for “License Plate Agency” not “Driver’s License Agency”. Apparently to increase productivity and frustration, North Carolina splits up their DMV services amongst several smaller offices, all in strip malls of varying sketchiness. At that point, we gave up and bought baked potatoes instead.
Then, this morning, I knew success was at our fingertips! We got there at 9am, with all appropriate paperwork, armed with library books (yeah, library card before driver’s license, that’s how I roll). Unfortunately, fifty-three other people had arrived before it even opened and only two people were working. Since there was no room to wait inside, Steven and I spent the majority of the three hours sitting on the concrete curb outside. Luckily, lots of people gave up! And, finally, our perseverance was rewarded:
Yay!!!! It's like a Biblical fable, really. If you just wait long enough in the smell of cigarettes and desperation, you too can have a piece of plastic with your picture and organ donor status.