I'm Now a Licensed California Driver!

I cheated the law for quite some time, but when I got pulled over with an out-of-date registration sticker (even though I had paid up), the state of California ticketed me for driving without a license. Apparently, my Connecticut license is not valid to them. I'll have you know that it's not as if they just hand the things out in CT, California's preoccupation with making me have their license is such an elitist thing.

Since I had a mandatory court date to pay some sort of fine and explain myself, I decided that would be a good day to take off work and obtain a California license. A few hours before my hearing, I went to the DMV. Generally, people talk a lot of crap about the DMV. Actually, maybe these people are just comedians, you know, the type that also crack wise on airline food. (Here is where I would ask, "What airlines serve food anymore?" but I don't want to be one of them.) My experience at the DMV was rather pleasant, actually. The wait wasn't too bad, and all three people I spoke with were both jovial and helpful. In a weird way, I even enjoyed the employees' company.

When I first got my license in Connecticut, it was the eye test that made me the most nervous. It's not that I can't see, just that I can't see well. I have difficulty discerning which direction the spokes of the letter E are pointing; perhaps it's the English teacher in me, but I think all Es should be pointing to the right, thank-you-very-much. The proctor had me read a line, and I basically guessed directions, hoping to hit enough. "Are you reading that line?" I was asked. "Oh, that line!" I pretended, and tried a different combination. "Are you sure you're looking at the right line?" the proctor checks again. "Oh, you're kidding, that one, I'm sorry," I said, faking my way through a new set of directions yet again. Evidently, the third attempt accidentally proved close enough, because I was deemed to be visually up to par, due more to my skilled bluffing than actual vision.

At any rate, now in California, my eye sight is either much improved or the letters are larger, because I aced the test. At the next desk over, an elderly man I first encountered at the 99 Cent store two days before was failing miserably at his eye test. Had I had ready access to a computer, I probably would have wrote a blog post about this man just from what I witnessed during our first interaction. As we were in the same aisle together, I watched this tiny man amble right into a rack of junk food, knocking both it and himself over; it was truly frightening. Later, he ended up being the person in front of me at the register, totally confused by everything. He had to be coaxed into paying for his items after not remembering what to do. Before he left, he pointed at the tag on the cashier's shirt and asked, "Is your name 99 Cents?" "No," she responded, pointing to the name below the tag identifying the store's name. "It's Holly." I was expecting the man to laugh, acknowledging his horrible joke, but instead he vacantly said, "Oh," giving full indication that this man was barely functioning. I mentally compared him to Mr. Magoo, this hopeless, bumbling figure who by extremely fortunate circumstances had managed not to get himself killed yet.

Seeing (and yes, I can!) him again two days later and watching (again, I can!) him prove his Mr. Magoo status was the universe's weird way of validating that this man is one stride away from danger at any given moment. I kept waiting for how the DMV would handle this situation and try to avert crisis, but much to my surprise, they merely referred him to an eye specialist, giving him a temporary thirty day license to use until he could get his vision improved. If you're blind, you're blind: thirty days is a long time to plow over dozens of people at a farmer's market. I think it's great that the folks at the DMV are so nice and accommodating, but this might be a case where they're killing [pedestrians] with their kindness.