A Day at the Sacto DMV

Regardless of the time spent, a day at the DMV can seem that way. More like day on the DMZ.

For me, I readied myself for almost a month between getting my driver's license renewal notice and setting up an appointment. I tried to go on-line to begin the renewal process, but the site just kept kicking me out as most sites do to me. I phoned and actually got a human. Set an appointment with the hangman: June 3, 10 a.m. Might as well be “high noon” because I have to go in to take an exam — with age comes examination — which I overactingly dread, knowing in my bones I was going to fail the exam, that and holiday travel was coming up, license required, mine with about a month left.

And yes, I studied up. I'd gone last renewal and failed the exam once, twice was my lucky number, thank goodness. And I remember efficient, the whole business, down-playing the DMZness, but my perceived demons of the 'D' persisted.

Deep early morning breath, coffee cup, rental car just because, parking lot on Broadway and Stockton, Sacramento, traffic and fast food. The DMV building. Strong coffee. The non-appointment line is already anaconda-like with a bright sign that says “With Appointment” with no one in line. That's me.

Now is where the demilitarization and “the horror, the horror” begins to diminish. One lovely lady, in lovely cotton, almost a Gaugin on one seat with one small screen, a pay day line to her right, only me to her left. She allows me an audience while the long line holds its fire at me. I tell her my tale of an appointment. She listens while the soup line just about begins to bang its soup cans, waiting patiently, I repeat, patiently.

She looks me up on her little screen and sure enough, there I am, given a call number. I give an apology to the first person in the concert ticket line.

I'm in, in the bare necessity, efficient atmosphere and the democracy, the sanctity, the sanctuary, the bureaucracy assurance of our remarkable Republic bursts, washes, floods over me. I'm usually proud of my country but this, every ethnicity, every necessity to be here in America, every sex, every choice, every color, every class, every answer to up-yours Trump and all he and his might spews; heavy on the new Mexican-Americans, kind of like a bureaucratic border.

I'm a pale face in the well-behaved crowd, some within earshot complaints, the DMV clerks, saints, patient and efficient as the soft female voice calls out the next up numbers in rotation and location, a bakery call of car concerns.

I wait maybe 20 minutes for my number to come up, the UN panoply of languages around me a tower of fable. OK, I'm up, the clerk at my window, an average Joe. Then uh-oh, my appointment has arrived. What I could not do online at home, registering, has to be done, here and now. My knees buckle. But buckle up bub, you are here. Make a full day of it. A Russian sounding security guard, burly and bearish, is shouting about a misplaced bicycle, sounding a bit too East German DMZ.

But it’s a good soundtrack as I approach the fear of the little computer screen. I begin the 400-step registration process. I'm stuck. I have to ask the young, bearded Pakistani fella next to me for help, nearly pleading. He does help and I get the rhythm of it, slowly and somewhat assuredly I get it done. Crying babies, Vietnamese elders with helpful daughters, bikers, hikers, fossil fuel consumers all.

Ok, I'm back at Average Joe's window with my new pass number. Eye check, check. Thumb print, check. $45, check. I'm getting a self-induced feeling that somehow I wasn't going to have to take the exam. “Take a photo,” Joe says and then the hammer, the transmission falls. “Then take your test. Did you study? Good luck.”

I mumble disappointment in response.

The photo line creeps forward. You want the face of a nation? Just get in the DMV photo line. Turbans, bouffants, crewcuts, hoodies, dyed, fried, bandanas, hair clips, a Walmart of faces and places. Us.

I try to smile for my mug shot because the exam line is right behind. Can't avoid it, staring into the void of the lone testing room, more lab rat to me than efficiency.

In I go. I just know that I do not know enough to score A or at least a C+ (I guess you can miss two questions and still pass). I do it. I know I failed. The headline on the computer says so. I mope up to the control desk and try a complaint that the sample test examples to study hardly matched the exam questions. The central desk does not reply. So I try again. Nope, in all caps, bold.

One question about what short left turn might produce in the negative is something I'd never consider. Where in the unknown? The known is if you fail three times you have to go back into the Chancery Court, square one, all over again! But what the hell: “Into the breech once more." I could use Henry V and Will Shakespeare's help about now.

Stee-rike 3! So, I sit with the handbook and plan my advance or retreat. I'm here. I shall exam. I figure I've got three more shots at it so I'll use up two more maybe and return another time for guillotine three.

Another mini-screen re-registration, foreigners and familiars all asking an elder or a younger what's up with this or that. I sympathize with all of it.

I somehow get my next permission slip and my next calm, collected clerk, Jim Average, helpful and more so to accept another $45, with another eye test and thumb print and photo and the exam room abyss.

Failure is an option. But high and behold I somehow have passed the exam, the headlines says so. How? I do not know. Relief is all encompassing as I get my final form. I am re-born. License in two to three weeks. Phewee!

I take a moment to try for the director’s office to compliment them on their efficiency, but she's all caught up. Regardless of my distress, I feel need to let them know they are not the kiss of death. Fortunately, I have to settle for Ms. Gaugin just by chance. She’s appreciative. Chance favors the resilient.