DMV STRATEGY

FEATURED POSTS

December 6, 2023

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLES, WESTMINSTER

We all dread it.

This is the year I had to get my driver license renewed, and that doesn’t make me happy. It means a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles, a long wait to be called to a window – even if I have an appointment – and being curtly ordered around by and a bunch of harried bureaucratic talking heads.

It’s not as though all DMV folks are rude. I’m sure many of them are very nice, but their job is to process endless paperwork and to move things along as quickly as possible in order to get to the next cranky person in line. As in every office where it’s almost impossible to get fired, there are a few DMV staffers who take their frustrations or prejudices out on whomever they decide is worthy of their contempt – usually the person standing on the other side of the plexiglass window from them.

The bottom line is that nobody looks forward to going to the DMV for anything.

The problem for me is compounded by the fact that the state of California has decided that anybody more than 70 years old needs to be checked a little more carefully than others. I understand it, but being a 70-plus person, I also resent it. I know from experience that many people much younger than 70 have age-related, anger-related, or drug-related driving problems, and many people older than that do not.

In the State of California, there is now a special test for people older than 70, and it is creating some concern for older drivers.

To be fair, the DMV is offering sample quizzes that older drivers can use to practice up for the test. But, because it is the DMV, the sample quizzes have little to do with the actual test that is required of older drivers. I’ve heard this from several friends, and I’ve even seen a couple stories crop up in online news stories.

The “Knowledge Test” required of folks 70 and up, is drawn up by a bunch of political apparatchiks who lay down arbitrary rules about such minutia as how many feet before you turn should you signal your intent. The real answer, of course, is that it depends. If you are driving at 25 miles-per-hour through a residential neighborhood, it’s one thing. If you are getting ready to exit a freeway at 70 miles-per-hour with a monster truck hot on your bumper, it’s quite another.

So the real rule of the road – the one real drivers should employ – is use your common sense and err on the side of safety. But it’s hard to put that in a test.

Yes, everybody hates going to the DMV, but if you live in California and you want to legally drive a car and have insurance cover you for the unexpected, you have little choice but to dance to their tune.

At least that’s what I thought.

NEXT STORY: I AM A MAN!

News

April 17, 2024

Minor Character

Sometimes I feel like a minor character in one of those really long James Michener historic novels. I’m one of the guys they check in on a couple of times during the course of the book and one more time when he finally kicks the bucket. In truth, that suits me just fine. I don’t want to be one of the major players – those guys who lie, cheat, sleep around, make a lot of money, kill a lot of people, and then then suffer a tragic death on Christmas Eve. I just want to be me – plugging along, having some fun, loving the same woman for years, and then quietly passing away.

March 25, 2024

Cereal Killer

I have almost given up on cereal. As a younger man, I loved a sugary treat. As an old man, who has to watch his diet, I find myself checking labels on everything. Sugar is the enemy. For instance, Cap’n Crunch – a former favorite of my wife – contains: Corn Flour, Sugar, Oat Flour, Brown Sugar, Palm and/or Coconut Oil, Salt, Reduced Iron, Yellow 5, Niacinamide, Yellow 6, BHT, Thiamin, Mononitrate, Pridoxined Hydrochloride, Rioflavin, and Folic Acid. My choice: plain old Shredded Wheat. Ingredients: wheat and BHT (a harmless preservative). Not a taste treat, but at least I’ll live to tell about it

Highway Memorials

Driving across country nowadays, we notice a growing number of roadside displays – flowers, crosses, and ribbons – marking the sites where people apparently died in traffic accidents. I do understand mourning the passing of somebody you love, but I’m not sure I see the point of putting a display at the place along the road where they died. Even sadder is the fact that flowers wilt and highway trash piles up around the displays, making them just another sad reminder of life cut short.

December 5, 2023

Love Motives

I often tell my wife I love and adore her, mainly because I do and also because women like to hear the man in their life actually say the words. But during one conversation I had to confess that some times when I say it – especially when she is irked and giving me the deadly silent treatment – I am also reminding myself of that fact so I don’t start yelling and slamming doors. Is that so wrong?

Being Mortal

I am officially an old man. Sometimes I forget, then I look in the mirror and there it is. The truth is that life has its limits, and that is how it should be. There are new generations coming up, ready to step up and take our place. They are welcome to it. If you have reached old age, you have made some blunders in you life. If you think otherwise, then you are indeed a fool. You can warn the new generations about the mistakes you made, but they are oblivious. This too is as it should be. It’s their world, and it’s on them to screw it up for the generations to follow, just as we did for them.

Good Deeds

There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. It’s mostly – but not always – true. The problem with good deeds is that most people who do them expect to be appreciated. In actuality, good-deed recipients are more often resentful about it, rather than grateful. Nobody likes being the person who has to rely on the good will of others. So do good deeds for your own sake – because it makes you feel better, not because you want to be feel appreciated.

Recreational Bitching

Did you ever notice that some people – maybe more people than not – like to complain about everything? In the summertime, it’s too hot. In the wintertime it’s too cold. Health care is too expensive. Young people are too rude. Old people move too slowly. There ought to be a law against anything and everything that might make one unhappy. It’s recreational bitching, and we all do it to greater or lesser extent. Maybe once in a while, it might make sense to listen to how we talk and how we think. Most of us are just doing the best that we can.