You Down with DMV?

Well you better be

The week before Thanksgiving, I lost my wallet. After the requisite retracing of my steps and desperate prayers to St. Anthony, it remained, much like a certain girl, gone. This meant I needed to replace my driver’s license. I had to go to the DMV.

In my experience, living in Los Angeles means you interact with the DMV more than you have in your entire goddamn life (sorry, St. Anthony). I’ve been to several DMV locations across this beautiful city, and now I can add the Lincoln Heights DMV to my little black book of DMVs. Luckily, I was familiar with the location thanks to my adult tap performance having taken place directly across the street several months prior. I’m really a woman about town.

When I arrived, the parking lot was full, but my spirits lifted when I discovered there was a second level to the parking lot with a few spaces left. It was the only time I’d successfully parked in a Los Angeles DMV parking lot. You might say that’s a failure of planning or imagination regarding motion vehicles on the part of a department whose job is planning and imagination regarding motion vehicles, and if you did, I would vigorously nod my head in agreement.

Once inside, I was confronted by the familiar sea of blue cubicles, flashing screens, and automated voices that are the hallmark aesthetic of all DMVs. Defeated people sat in connected blocks of seating, the life drained from their faces, hope a distant memory. It’s the rare situation that makes you think, “Wow, this must have really sucked before cell phones.”

I got in the appointments line because I, a genius, made an appointment. The line did not move for twenty minutes. The man in front of me told me he was going to go sit down. I wished him the best. Eventually, a DMV employee came through the line and assigned each of us a number. She asked me if I had filled out my application already. I said yes. She directed me to the ominously named “Room 22,”

Room 22 turned out to be the place with all the computers that administer the written driving test. The employee there, who I guess was the boss of the computers, told me I needed to fill out an application. I told him I had filled out an application. He asked me for my driver’s license number. I told him I was there because I lost my driver’s license. He asked me my name again. I told him. He searched the computer. “Oh yea, I see it.” I was sent back out to the block of depression seating.

To the DMV’s credit, once seated, my number was called only halfway through reading an article on my phone about how everything is bad now. I rushed to the desk where an employee helped me sort through all my documents. He told me I needed to fill out an application. I told him I had filled out an application. He asked me for my driver’s license number. I told him I was there because I lost my driver’s license. He asked me my name again. I told him. He searched the computer. “Oh yea, I see it.”

He stapled a bunch of papers together and told me that would serve as my interim license until the new one came. The only thing left for me to do was to go to Room 22 and take the written driving test. “I just took it a couple of years ago,” I found myself responding, my voice rapidly rising with panic.

I desperately probed my brain to see if it had retained the answers to questions like, “How many feet do you signal before turning?” It had not. These answers had been dislodged, shaken loose for information I will probably remember until my deathbed, like “Millie Bobbie Brown dates Jon Bon Jovi’s son, whose name is Jake Bongiovi.”

The clerk told me, with some sympathy, that the tests were assigned randomly and the good news was I “probably” wouldn’t have to take it for another ten years after this. He also said if I didn’t pass I could get a temporary license which would allow me to drive legally until I did pass the test, a policy that seemed to defeat the purpose of the test. Faced with the prospect of going home and then returning to the DMV another day, I steeled my resolve and headed back to Room 22.

Once there, I stood in front of the computer. The computer said it was a touchscreen but remained very unresponsive to human touch, and I found myself desperately jabbing the answer to each multiple-choice question, heart in my throat. The test covered things like how to cross light rail tracks (something I literally never encounter in my day-to-day driving), dumping animals on the side of a highway, and the minimum prison sentence for vehicular manslaughter. All I remember is my strategy in guessing the highest number of years for the manslaughter question was bad. I don’t know the correct answer. I’ll never know the correct answer.

That said, I passed. Not with flying colors, but with the requisite percentage, like most drivers. I turned to the employee monitoring the tests and said I had finished. “Did you pass?” they asked me. I said yes. They took me at my word, which again begged the question: what was the point of taking the test?

I left flying high. I felt like I had just gotten away with something, which I had. I could continue to own and operate a deadly piece of machinery. I resolved never to lose my wallet ever again because a wise man once said “you’ve got to hold on to what you’ve got” and now his son dates the girl from Stranger Things and hopefully none of us are convicted of vehicular manslaughter, but if we are, the good news is we’ll be in prison less time than I would have assumed.