Renewing My License

I had to go to the DMV this morning to renew my license. Picture, fingerprint, money and I was done. It just took 90 minutes.

The time was allocated as follows:

• Waiting to be called: 50 minutes (Under the G, 46. Oh, that's me!)
• Waiting to get my picture taken: 20 minutes
• Getting out of a parking lot filled with people who should not be allowed to drive: 10 minutes
• Taking the eye test, validating my information: 7 minutes
• Getting my picture actually taken: 2 minutes
• Parking when I arrived: 1 minute

I got to the DMV at 5 after 8am. This put me behind the overachievers and people who line up at 3am in front of Target on the day after Thanksgiving. They were all in there, numbers in hand. My number, which was G046, seemed rather depressing since they were on G002 when I got it. (They have letters for categories, A-J, and as far as I could determine, G was for people with easy renewal transactions.)

Then, about the time I got called, the dregs of humanity started in through the front door. Fortunately, I was ahead of that wave, so while I waited 20 minutes to get my picture taken, when I walked out I would have guessed that the line for pictures was at least 45 minutes long... probably longer given how many of those people seemed unlikely to be able to handle tasks like standing with their toes on a line drawn on the floor in order to have their picture taken.

Still, I've been through the system, I was pleasant to everybody behind the counter, and I could have passed the eye test from a good 20 feet back from where I actually had to take it. I'm free to be an idiot for a few more years.