Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Drivers License Despondency

Those of you who read this often know that it's been time for me to get a new drivers license, and most importantly a new drivers license picture. I went in to do that early on but when I tried to get the license I tried to have the extraneous "W" taken out of my name on the license, which couldn't be done without my original birth certificate and marriage license, which I spent about two weeks trying to find. I figured that was okay though because then I could make some preparations, get a haircut, pay attention to what color shirt to wear, stack the deck in favor of a good picture this go-round.

For two months I've been waiting for that good hair day, the right shirt to be clean, that scratch on my forehead to heal, the perfect day to get my picture taken. Then yesterday was my last day to get my new license and I was out of days. I was forced to go in just as I am. The anxiety was terrible. With my file of legal documents with my name all over them (none with a haphazard "W") I took my little tissue paper number and waited my turn.

First of all, they won't take the "W" out. It's there because the name on my birth certificate is Alice Ananda Weaver Seyle. I don't know what the marriage license has to do with anything because the name on there is my maiden name, thus the same as the one on my birth certificate. The name on my social security card is Alice Ananda Seyle Spear, and that doesn't have anything to do with anything either. They explained that they stuck the "W" in there because they couldn't fit in the full "Weaver" and understandably so, that would be five names. It would look ridiculous. They insist on representing the "Weaver" though because they claim that it's my middle name. I don't understand it and I don't feel like getting a court order to change it as they suggested, so what I've ended up with is, again, "Spear, Alice, Ananda, W, Seyle," like a huge dork and a picture that looks like this:

It's better that what I had before, without a doubt. It's still an embarrassment but at least I'm smiling. The shirt that was clean yesterday was a button-up cream-colored one with faint red flowers. It's exactly the same color as my skin and I see now that I look weird in it. In the picture I look like I'm not wearing a shirt but have loose skin and the plague. My hair is a mess, much puffier that I imagined it to be, kind of like Roseanne Roseannadanna. When you look at the picture you see just dark hair with a tiny smiling face punched in the middle... But at least I'm smiling.

On my way out the door to go to the DMV I told my manager how nervous I was about this picture, he said I should just refuse to have the picture taken, "like Russ," who is our delivery driver. I didn't think that was legal, so I cornered Russ up this morning and demanded to see this alleged no-picture license. Apparently it is legal because right where his picture should have been are the words "legal without picture." He said he had to make a trip to Little Rock to get that done. I'm going to do the same thing in 2014, this is too much for me.

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