What Does A Girl Have To Do To Drive In This State?

I’m having a little trouble renewing my driver’s license. Here is how my week has gone.

Tuesday: Go to the dentist and notice while filling out paper work that my driver’s license expired Jan. 31. Like a responsible driver, I immediately go to get it renewed after my appointment. Girl behind the counter informs me (in a not very nice way) that I have to have a birth certificate to get my driver’s license renewed since it expired.

Let me interject and say that in December 2007 I went to get it renewed since I needed to have my new address on my license and it was only a year away from needing to be renewed. I guess (from the way it was explained to me) because it was 13 months instead of less than a year before the one I had expired, they issued me a duplicate instead of a new one…but didn’t tell me that and I left thinking that my drivers license didn’t expire for a few years and I hadn’t looked at it that close until it was too late.

Wednesday: Decided to go to get license renewed (birth certificate in hand) before work. Get to the location and they didn’t open until 8:30 and I didn’t have time to go back before they closed at 5:00.

Today: Take an early lunch to try yet again to get license renewed. Take in certified copy of birth certificate (which by the way I used to get my passport and have used for several other official matters). The certified copy was dated March 1974 and stamped with an official stamp. The LOVELY woman at the Tag Agency looks at it and says “that stamp isn’t raised. I don’t know that you didn’t make a copy of this and that it’s a fake.” To which I explained to her all the things I had used this for and that this was in fact my official copy. So she tells me I can take my passport down to the Department of Transportation and get my license that way. I explained to her my passport expired last year. She then tells me they MIGHT take it and then adds “but you better hope that you don’t get pulled over on your way there because you ARE driving without a valid drivers license.” Yeah, I wanted to hurt her.

As it stands, my mom is getting yet another official copy…with a raised seal…and mailing it over night so that I can try yet again to get my drivers license renewed.

I think what gets me in this whole situation is the joy the Tag Agency workers seem to get in making this situation all the more difficult.

Moral of this story…pay REALLY close attention to your drivers license.