Princess Buttercup and the DMV

Maybe I'm just old and out of touch, but the other night as I was sitting at the computer writing on the blog, Kaylan, Katies sister calls in a tizzy. "Why won't Katie answer the phone!?!?" "Tell her to call me as soon as she's done talking to Shelly!!" She might have thrown an OMG in there too. I don't remember, she talks really fast and my brain can't process things that fast.

Katie and Kaylan turn 24 next Wednesday and it was time for them to renew their drivers licenses. Kaylan's problem I found out was that the next day they had planned to go down to the DMV to do that and she just didn't have time tonight to do her hair so there was NO way that she was going to be able to do it the next morning.

Ok, I haven't worried about how my hair looked since the mid to late 90's and I'm not a girl, but I would still assume that 12 hours should be enough time to get ones hair ready to take a picture that few people will ever see. Either way, they made plans to do it the following day and I did some research to make sure that her special day came off perfectly. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get that info to her in time.

A quick google search of "How to take a good drivers license photo" returns about 19.2 million results. The one site I viewed gave 11 tips and I especially like tip #11 on the list: "Shut your eyes for a few seconds right before the photo is snapped. This will help keep you from blinking with the flash and being caught with your eyes closed, or worse, half closed in the photo."

This would have been a critical one for her because she pulled the half blink on the photo, so it looked like she got all dressed up for a party, then popped 3 Valium right before getting there. For a point of reference think "Gary Busey arrest photo sans the unkempt hair and loud Hawaiian shirt"

I guess she tried to see if she could do a retake, but Mr. State Employee was having none of it. And see, thats where the problem en lies Kaylan. The DMV is a volume business - get people in, pay your $10, get people out. If you'll notice the line is formed like a cattle chute...... the livestock gets movin the wrong way and then we have mayhem. I'm not calling you and the rest of the people there cattle, but thats how it works. And trust me, the people taking the photos didn't JUST miss that photography job with GQ magazine by 'that much'. Chances are that question 7 on the application was "Can you press a button on a camera" and if they check yes, they make it to round two of the interview process.

The error in your thinking is that you wanted to look perfect on your photo, when in actuality the only people that will ever see it are Bill the Bouncer at the bar, Larry the ticket counter agent at the airport and Habib at the convenience store.

What you should have done is go out on an all night bar hopping trip, rolled out of bed, into the car and to the DMV or, option two would have been to dress up like Bozo the Clown. Then people would laugh at your photo, not because your photo was bad, but because clowns are funny.

Okay, maybe not Pennywise the Clown from "It", but in general they are funny.

Oh yeah, there is a way around this Kaylan. Wait about 3 months, go back in and tell them you lost your drivers license and they'll retake your photo. Might cost you another $10, but can you really put a price on something thats the difference between getting and not getting Bill the Bouncers phone number at the bar?