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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Middle class kicks

My family and I are not on very good terms with the DMV. Naturally, we've learned to coexist peacefully, doing our time like normal everyday respectable folk, but to hear my parents talk, a visit to the DMV rates slightly below a root canal. So we're ready to jump at any opportunity to make our visits bearable. And oh, we find such creative ways to do so . . . !

My alarm went off at 4:40am. The first question in my mind being, "Why are we doing this again?" An hour later we were outside the brand new Cranston branch of the RI Department of Motor Vehicles, rain drizzling determinedly and splattering our dorky lawn chairs. I reconsidered my fondness for rain. It's so much more pleasant when I'm safe inside my house. I was too cold and too wet and too sleepy to do more else besides stare morosely at the pavement, ranking this camp-out against others my dad's orchestrated over the years.

Once people started arriving, things got more mentally stimulating. The lack of any real order produced a lop-sided line and also plenty of line-cutting. My sense of justice was mostly abridged; I was in front of a door, and my parents were in front of the other two, so between the three of us we'd get a ticket. Teamwork! There were nice and interesting people to talk to in line, and plenty of drama with the line-cutters and the cameras around, and eventually the doors opened with plenty of anti-climactic shuffling.

Though we ended up being the second people in line, we were the first people served, inside the building itself for perhaps twenty minute tops [though it felt more like fifteen], and back to our regularly scheduled programing by 9am. I feel I now must find something productive to do with the rest of my day, to make sure I didn't save all that time just to waste it another way. Dare I say that those wet three hours on the sidewalk were more meaningful than any shorter previous trip to the DMV? They were.

Three hours and some two-hundred dollars later, I am in possession of a legally registered car. I am also in the newspaper?

My dad is really awesome. And possibly "fair-weather crazy."

3 comments:

Micah E. said...

I find this amusing. More so, the fact that you were totally in the newspaper.
My DMV has never pained me. I feel blessed.

Art said...

You're in the newspaper? Fun.

Michael Au-Mullaney said...

Micah, that's because no one else lives in your town (or the surrounding area) ;)

Like I've said Hayley, you're crazy.