Long arm of law has some reach


That state trooper who visited us last week caught a few people with their pants down, me included. My crime was driving with an expired license. Not a revoked license, not a suspended license, not a license sullied in any way by vehicular misconduct. 


In fact, I’d been driving around with it for years and never been stopped before, precisely because I’m an anally cautious driver. So, my license was just expired. Here’s why. The last time it came up for renewal, we were still living in the city. We had recently changed addresses and I never got a renewal reminder in the mail. 


When I called the Department of Motor Vehicles to find out how long I had, I was told there was a two-year grace period. No rush, it seemed, so I put it off. We didn’t even own a car at the time.


Lazy, irresponsible? OK, I’ll cop to that plea. But I have an excuse which actually borders on a medical condition. I suffer from a pathological aversion to process and procedure, government, education, training, testing, certification and, most of all, offices with benches and pale green walls.


So, by the time I got around to trying to renew the thing, I was informed that it was too late. I’d have to start all over again, from scratch, as though I’d never had a license at all. There’d be the written test for a permit, the five-hour class, the road test, and so forth. I couldn’t face it. 


Now, I’m forced to, unless I want to move to Europe or go to the IGA on roller skates for the rest of my life. In the meantime, Rebeca has to chauffeur me around and, although she’s being very good about it, I know she doesn’t like it much.


So, I’ve gotten their little manual and the application forms and I spent an hour or so this morning looking through them and I find, to my growing dismay, that I haven’t got enough of the many proofs of identity and age they require. They won’t take your expired license as proof of anything, even though they’re the ones who issued it. They’ll take your social security card as proof of your identity, but not of your age, even though to get a social security card, you had to show your birth certificate. I can’t find my passport (expired anyway) or my birth certificate, even though I’ve taken the house apart.


I don’t know when the last time you saw your birth certificate was, but FYI, to order a new one online and pay the fee with a credit card, your account has to bear your street address, not a post office box number, which is what mine shows.


My honorable discharge from the United States Navy bears both my birth date and social security number, but isn’t worth bupkis to them. A St. Regis Mohawk Tribe photo ID is as good as gold. Likewise, a foreign passport, a pistol permit, a welfare card, a permanent resident card, a reentry card or a refugee travel document are all acceptable proofs. So it’s plain that on top of neglecting to renew my driver’s license, I haven’t been doing anything else right as far as America is concerned.


But think about this for a minute. If you continue, throughout your lifetime, to renew your license on a timely basis, and pay each time of course, your right or ability to drive will never be challenged. But if you stop paying, even if you’ve been driving and paying for 30 years or more, you’ll be punished by having to start all over, as if you were still in high school. And you’d better have the preferred documentation handy or they won’t even talk to you.


Assuming I can ever assemble all of the paperwork I need to prove that I actually am who I say I am, and then get through all the training, testing and certification, I’ve still got to go to court in December with the ticket. All I can hope is that the judge doesn’t throw the book at me.