Bureaucracy Now!
For W.F.A.
I went to get a Real ID a few days ago. Having reasonably concluded, for just under a decade, that the government’s “hard” deadline would almost inevitably just keep being moved back indefinitely, and originally having planned a trip home just before the deadline, I had similarly just kept putting off going and getting a Real ID, mostly in fear of having to take a new driver’ test in my late forties, after the “third time’s a charm” driving test debacle of my late teens. I once even failed the written.
2.
My dear friend took the driver’s test as soon as we moved here to Chicago some twenty years ago, when I’d only had my Massachusetts license a few years, but personally, I was absolutely not taking any chances on failing another driver’s test again after finally passing one.
3.
Given that my Massachusetts license was still current, I went to the Real ID Super Center last Wednesday with fingers crossed that the level of demand for this silly super-size me I.D. was strong and widespread enough that I could squeak by without having to take a Road Test, and I purposely chose a DMV office that didn’t offer them, so they couldn’t pull a bait and switch on me.
I didn’t even consider for one minute the degree to which not owning or having driven a car to their location with which to take a driving test was also fairly prophylactic.
But it’s been decades since I finally miraculously passed a road test, and I feared they might spring a loaner on me or something even more sinister. A strong imagination is sometimes a curse.
4.
Ten or so years ago when they first started this post-9-11 panic (same birth years as I.C.E.), I tried to find some official looking mail around my Dad’s house with the name my Father and I share, but without the III or IV on the envelope, in order to get a Massachusetts Real ID.
The Massachusetts DMV was unimpressed by my paltry circular and catalog offerings, so I relented on the Real I.D. front, and they rewarded me by placing perhaps the worst picture ever taken of me on my regular license for just short of a decade.
5.
Nonetheless, I just flew to Boston and back with my temporary paper “Real ID,” and while I successfully made it through security twice, I did get handed a “red card” on my way out of Boston.
On the other hand, my new laminated no-road-test-required Illinois Drivers License will soon arrive, I’m going to cut up the passive aggressive red warning notice for collage materials, and amidst so many things going terribly wrong in the world this very minute. At least this one, particular, personally resonant and universally meaningless small thing actually worked out…
I’ll take the win.