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In Which Everyone Gets a Drivers License, Eventually Me
I'm typing this post in WordPad, as my DSL has been hooked up but I still have no modem. Hopefully by the time you read this, I will have rejoined society online. I've spent most of my time here spending lots and lots of money on things like furniture and insurance. But the excitement of last Friday was registering my car in Missouri (pronounced Mizzurrah), which required 2 trips to the courthouse, 2 to the insurance agency, and 3 to AAA which also has a license service.
I had to make multiple trips to the license place because I did not arrive the first time with my social security card. It seems that although it says right on the card not to use it as idenfitication, our own state government requires it. After taking an easy eye test and identifying a few street signs (although without GPS coordinates), I finally obtained a license that doesn't say Under 21 on it. Of course while I was hassled about the social security number, they didn't seem to care too much about whether you were a competent individual when handing out licenses. While I was there waiting, they gave one guy a license who couldn't walk up to the counter under his own power, nor could he see where he was going. Then was the real doozy.
A woman walked up to renew her license who was quite old and had glasses thicker than the car windshield. For the eye test they asked her to read line 1 of the chart, which had letters approximately the size of the Hollywood sign. After stumbling through the first half of the line, she stopped. "Go on, do the right half," said the attendant. "That's all the letters, isn't it?," replied the woman. Her vision was so bad, even with her glasses on, that she couldn't see half of the letters, which I'm pretty sure could have been seen from space. So the attendant, who apparently gets paid on commission based on how many license she gives out, asked her to identify the signs. Now the point of this exercise was to insure not only that you could see the signs but that you knew what they meant. But this woman identified the signs as "that's an arrow pointing to the right", or "I see an arrow going up and an arrow going down". When prompted by the attendant to say what the signs meant, she was unable to do so. So instead of revoking her license, the attendant identified the ones she missed (including -- but not limited to -- no U-turn, merging traffic, and divided highway) and took her picture. This was a test that a 5 year old could pass, and this woman failed it, yet she still got a license. And people complain about Florida drivers...
Comments
You oughta know by now that Misourrians are by far the worst drivers in the country.
I'm actually considering running for governor solely on a platform of "I will require every person to retake their driver's license exam." I don't see many votes coming my way.
Posted by: Brian at June 3, 2004 12:40 AM
Wow, sad. You know that you can ask to be given an ID on your driver's license that is *not* your SSN. I asked for this when I first moved here, and got that "trouble maker, peace-loving, throwback to the 60's" look from the agent behind the desk. If only they would put those attributes on my license instead of "needs corrective lenses -- duh".
Posted by: rkc at June 3, 2004 7:46 PM
Oh the SSN wasn't to put on the license, they wanted it for proof of identification, even though I had an out of state photo ID. I offered to bring in a passport and she responded "that still won't have your social security number on it". Brilliant.
Posted by: Chris Hill Festival at June 3, 2004 9:13 PM
And now i know why 2 cars will always go when an orange turns to a red. Coming from california, ive always wondered how people do it with this much impunity.
Posted by: Rohit at June 4, 2004 8:25 AM
Wait. There are *orange* lights in California??
Posted by: light at June 7, 2004 10:49 PM
In regards to that last comment, I now suspect Amy and David share a brain.
Posted by: Rachel at June 8, 2004 11:04 AM
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