A Department of Motor Vehicles Experience to Remember

MY MISSION
I had exactly one hour to present my title to the towing company to release my
impounded vehicle. So I had to stop at the full service DMV to retrieve a duplicate copy.

MY STORY
I entered the automatic doors to the overcrowded institution of men,
women, and children. Most appeared disgruntled but they had no choice but to wait patiently. The smokers smoked rampantly by the entrance doors, while several anxious young adults were determined to stay preoccupied by text messaging or making phone calls. One by one, we pulled out our alphanumerical tickets that were being announced in alphabetical groups over the intercom. I observed the entire room momentarily, and proceeded in slowly to find a seat on one of their "cozy” metal benches. After awhile, my eyes became intensely fixated on kiosk 8 because it was nearest to me. I scurried over to the lady at kiosk 8 in hopes that she would take pity on my sweaty, wrinkled forehead from the suspenseful day of events. "You have failed young lady!" She exclaimed that she wasn't going to lose her job over a stranger. I put my head down, returned to my seat, and did the only thing I could do. I waited. Then I waited some more, and still I waited. I waited for thirty minutes, an hour, two hours... The intercom lady in her monotonous tone retorted the alphanumerical codes from A through H...I was the letter I!!! The numerical coding came after the letters starting from 1 through 200.

I was SO DISCOURAGED!!! I111 discouraged to be exact...because the intercom voice and the visual screen aid were barely calling tickets from the letter H...the early H's at that! So I waited. As I waited, a young man my age, seemingly apathetic about his hygiene, decided to sit next to me. His good friend that accompanied him sat behind me and so naturally, they proceeded to converse. They casually spoke of pleasantries with me in the crossroad of their discussion. The young man sitting next to me simultaneously unmasked a malodorous stench. They talked, and he stank, they talked, and he continued to stink some more. So I got up and found an alternative seating arrangement that would allow me to breathe comfortably. I eventually found solace on the metal bench next to a middle-aged woman with a southern drawl. It seemed that she was more spent than I was. I never got the hearty-spirited woman's name, but she initiated rapport by admiring my neon red nail polish. I thanked her for the compliment and I became her Department of Motor Vehicle confidant. I told her I was I111 with a forced smile. She explained that she had been sent to 3 different kiosks in the past 4 hours. In my head, I decided that my own experience at the DMV paled in comparison to this anonymous, older, pale woman. I stopped feeling sorry for myself at that point. She then showed me her ticket after I asked her alpha ticket code. She pulled out her ticket enthusiastically as the intercom voice called out I92. As I suddenly felt a brief moment of anxiety at the closeness of my turn, the irony of her ticket reading decimated the remainder of the day's self-restraint, and I inadvertently burst into a very boisterous and cynical laugh. The middle aged woman's ticket read,

"F53."

EXTRAS

Sadly, I never made it to the tow company that day.
The kind woman did not have to wait any longer as I explained that she had missed her turn and the supervisor attended to her.
She also happened to have been diagnosed with leukemia in 2002, and was not supposed to have made it into 2009. She said that she was a blessed woman.

We both came to a consensus that sitting in the DMV for four hours was much better than being in prison or at the hospital for the same amount of time with no strength at all to come and sit in the DMV in the first place!

LESSONS LEARNED
1-Relatively, my father used to always say, "BE CAUTIOUS OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT."
2-Somewhere in the world, someone is always much worse off than you, so do your best to not feel sorry for yourself.