After too many hours standing on my feet in a room
full of people who had not quite abandoned hope, I will tell the story of my afternoon
at the House of Humility, the Queue of No Hierarchy, the Division of
Powerlessness. I suppose Trump has never been through that but almost all
Americans who are on the roads have had the humbling experience of being in the
sea of humanity, waiting for a number to come up on the screen.
I went straight from my piano lesson, thinking that
early afternoon must be better than the lunch hour. When I got there, the whole line was inside
the door, so that was a plus. But it was a line that wove back and forth
between the ropes and inched along. No one spoke. Almost everyone just kept
their eyes on their phone. My legs were
tired after a half an hour as there was nothing to lean on.
I clambered over the top of the salmon ladder and
threw myself into the first lock. The lock
keeper listened to my hopes and dreams, looked through my documents, and told
me I had what it took to get to the end. Swim on! He handed me my number: D83.
And then I began to regret my lack of planning. I had
no pen, no paper, no book, no knitting. I had a phone but that rarely feels
like a good use of time. I watched the
numbers A32, F129, B50, I239, C122. For
a long time I never saw anything with a D. I wondered if this was a cruel joke.
Finally after about 20 minutes I saw D78 on the screen so I there was hope
after all. I began to pay attention to how long it took to get from one D to
the next. Ugh. D79 was at the window for
a full hour. I wondered whether the D people were the most complicated. The I’s
were just whizzing by. The lady sitting next to me watched the numbers climb
from 1239 to 1251 and she went to the window. I rescued her newspaper.
As always, the seats were filled with families with
small children and babies. There were
Spanish speakers, lots of Asian folks, mothers with teenagers, people of all
colors, and plenty of elderly men and women.
We were all in the same helpless state. In front of us was a bank of 15 clerks:
Spanish speakers, Asian men and women, people of all colors. They were doggedly
doing their work, heads down, determined to make no mistakes.
After 100 minutes it was suddenly my turn! I gathered myself and went to Window #4. A
young African American woman in purple greeted me courteously and I presented
my needs. Two new trailers to register
and a pickup truck that needed a higher gross vehicle weight. After about 75 minutes of patiently leaning
on the counter, watching her go through her moves very carefully, I learned
that she was unable to do anything about the truck because I had sold it in
July of 2017. Except I hadn’t. We have the truck, and we want to legally
hitch it up to these new trailers and I need to make sure the paperwork allows
for that. She asked me to write a detailed affidavit with all the identifying
information, swearing that I had not sold the truck. I did that, compliant and
with a feeling of doom. Finally, she sent me down to Window 14 to speak to the
manager.
He started out with confidence but after another 20
minutes of distracted work (he was the manager and people needed to ask him
questions constantly) he said we didn’t own the truck anymore, it was sold to
someone in Louisiana and they are unable to make changes to the information now
that it is out of state. “I own the truck. I have it. I did not sell it. All I
want to do is hook it up to a heavy trailer and have the right gross vehicle
weight.”
“That is the least of your worries. If you get pulled over, you are driving a
stolen vehicle.”
Oh good grief.
We started the process of documenting an investigation. At 5:00 when I
walked out of the door – with no paperwork to show that we could tow a trailer
full of an 11,000 pound tractor – there were still over 40 people sitting in
their chairs, waiting their turn. The
office closes at 5:00 but those clerks will dutifully process all of those
people’s papers before they go home.
At the Department of Motor Vehicles, we are all
equals. We wait our turn with decorum, we are given full attention, and if we
bring the right documents, our needs are met. Mostly. I got two trailer tags
and a new Real ID (easy) but when Jon tows that tractor to Pennsylvania,
he will be taking his chances with the law.
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