One of the state’s recent cost-cutting measures has just saved me four years of aging.
For the first time this year, I was able to renew my driver’s license through the mail. Old-fashioned mail was an option adopted reluctantly by the Department of Motor Vehicles, as it promises an eternity of bliss in Heaven if you renew over the Internet. I declined to participate, not because I’m incapable of going to a Web site, but because I like to imagine some state worker, letter opener in hand, slicing into my envelop, yanking out the check and directing it to the person who handles checks, who probably appreciates my business. Without people like me devoted to making sure state workers are working, the person who handles checks would probably lose her job because it’s much faster, easier and cheaper to order your new driver’s license online.
The new renewal method lets you skip the visit to the DOL office. Too bad, because I miss those smiley faces in Oak Harbor that I last saw five years ago. I wonder if they’re still there, what with so many people renewing by mail and Web site. Maybe they’re staring at the four blank walls, counting off the seconds until retirement, which they will spend on the Internet.
The lack of an in-person visit to the DOL office means no more eye exam, which is a process that always made me nervous. If you can’t see, you’re the last person to know it, as I realized in the eighth grade when I flunked an eye-chart exam. Not until I saw that red buildings were made of individual bricks and that billboard signs use clean, sharp type, not blurry letters, did I realize that I couldn’t see before I had glasses. That explained the 214 consecutive whiffs in Pony League baseball. All the DOL wants is your signature stating that you can see and are healthy enough to drive. No one in the annals of renewing-by-mail or Web site has ever stated otherwise. If you do, presumably a State Patrol person will come to your house and take your driver’s license away.
After a few weeks my new license arrived in the mail with exactly the same picture taken five years ago. It apparently will always be part of my state file. The people at the DOL office have an uncanny ability to catch you with one eye closed, mouth agape and a chubby chin you didn’t even know you had protruding from the photo box. They took pride in it, and job satisfaction must have plummeted when the state decided to use the same photo for ten years, or longer. Also, the same lie I told about my weight five years ago is still there, and my gender remains male which is true, but it annoys me that the state didn’t even bother to ask if I’d changed.
My new driver’s license is good until June 22, 2015, when I will look and weigh exactly the same as I did when my previous license was issued on July 7, 2005. Washington state government gets a lot of criticism, but you have to give them credit for turning the DOL into a veritable fountain of youth, where you can mail in a check for $25 and never look a day older.
