i heart CA DMVs
after seeing this i realized i still hadn't written about my last trip to the DMV.
my license expired on my birthday this year and since i was dreading a trip to the DMV here (they're absolutely awful and unorganized) and since i was going out to see my mom anyhow, i decided to renew my license in CA.
their system is magic. you make a reservation online. before you leave you can go to their website and they'll tell you what the current wait time is. i get there and sit down. "is this your first time?" i turn to see that the question was directed to me from a poor poor girl with two lazy eyes (if that's even possible) and glasses about an inch thick. "um, i'm renewing," i say. "oh, i've taken the test a few times but haven't passed yet. wish me luck!" my number is blinking on the screen, "um, yeah, good luck" i say as i'm directed to a tiny office with two women in it.
lady1: jasmine, that's such a beautiful name!
me: thanks!
lady1: what's your ethnicity?
me: oh, i'm half chinese, half white.
lady1: part chinese people are soooo pretty!!!
me: um...thanks!
lady2: she's just saying that because she just found out she's 1/4 chinese.
lady1: it's true! can you believe it?! in all my 40 years i never knew!
lady2: you're 45.
lady1: oh, same difference.
me: (wondering how you can live to the age of 45 without knowing one of your parents is half asian)
lady1: okay dear, it'll be $35 dollars. you can pay by cash or check.
then i was sent off to take a written test. i saw the lazy-eyed girl with the glasses looking like she was severely stressed out. i kinda wanted to help her, but didn't want to get caught cheating and also figure it might be better to keep the girl off the road, to be perfectly honest. the test had weird questions about carrying animals in the back of your truck and driving at construction sites. my mother, in a rare stroke of genius, had printed out 4 sample written tests and answers that i perused on the 15 minute car ride there. every answer on the test (even though they were obscure and i didn't know the answers to half of them) were ones i'd already seen during the ride there. i breezed through the test, got 4 wrong but passed. got my picture taken and was out the door less than 20 minutes after i'd arrived.
happy times, people. happy times.
posted by jazz @ 10:54 AM
8 people who played with me:
I'm so glad I don't have to re-take any tests to renew my license.
"Part Chinese people are sooo pretty!" I love it. Is it even legal for them to ask your ethnicity? I think lady1 might be in love with you. Lady2 is just mad because she isn't part Chinese also.
Ack! Mine expired on my b-day ten days ago. I completely forgot. Thanks for the reminder.
"Part Chinese people are sooo pretty!"
In science we refer to this as the Kristen Kruek Corollary.
(I'm not really in science.)
o how weird. i always assumed you were latin. must be the boobs :)
That is such a strange DMV story. Imagine, a DMV transaction that took only 20 minutes. My mind can't handle the concept.
Yeah, the last time I was at the DMV was to change my address when I bought my house.
They wouldn't let me do it online, and so I waited, and waited. A full hour and I finally got the new address. Then they tell me that they have to mail it to my new address, and until then to use the fake ass looking paper copy they give me. They then proceeded to punch a hole in my old one invalidating it.
Two days later at the bar, they would not accept my new "fake ass" paper ID substitute, and then would not accept my old one with the hole in it as a valid ID to prove my date of birth...
Have I mentioned that I hate it here sometimes?
wow, dmvs are pretty awesome in cali.
sheesh, didn't lady1 ever have to do a family tree in junior high? how does one "suddenly" find that kind of thing out after 45 years.
people ask those kinds of questions a lot more than they ought to. my favorite is "where do you come from?" i always say "neptune."
yeah, we don't mess around here anymore in California. I can't fathom a reason why everyone doesn't adopt, at the very least, our DMV system. After that, people might want to consider adopting our weather too. It's pretty nice.
by the way, thanks for the shout out in the post!!
thanks for the reminder that i had a story!
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