Bad Hair Day at the License Bureau

This story does not begin at the Driver License Bureau. It begins a few days before that, a few days earlier when I could not stand the bangs wisping all over my eyes, covering them. I chopped them off. I exercised no finesse, thinking only that I wished to see, I wished to be free. I even chopped the sides and had my daughter cut the back.

When the hair stopped flying, I looked in the mirror. "Oh, no," I said. "Jack and the Beanstalk."

"More like Willie Wonka," my daughter said. This would be the Johnny Depp version.

In the days following, I had to use my license a couple of times at the bank, only to be reminded that it was expired. Expired? Why those incompetents at the DMV!* I renewed by mail in January! I now realized I'd never received it. After several phone calls, it came down to this: I had to go in, stand for hours in line, and replace it.

So I did. And lucky me, after I settled in for the wait, a lady said if anyone was just replacing their license, they should leave the waiting area, bypass the line, and head to the counter. WOOHOO!

Then she told me to step up to the camera. SNAP! OH NO! I'm Jack and the Beanstalk for the next six years. Of course, I decided right then and there to not get any tickets for six years. And to always pay cash.

It was later, when I was in my room, I remembered I'd once written myself a note on the back of an unopened letter, sometime in January. The note's been sitting under my curling iron since then.

I leaped up, snatched the envelope, and tore it open. There, in full glory, was my renewed license, with the old, much more presentable picture.

Oh, happy day!

*my apologies!