Well, 'fess up - it’s only just barely a state. Its primary function appears to be the collection of tolls on I-95 (is the JFK the most expensive toll road, per mile, in the country?).
In fairness, though, I have to admit that I’d really, really miss Rehoboth and Dewey Beaches if Delaware suddenly vanished!
I can think of a few people in Delaware I’d love to see wiped off the face of the earth, actually, but there it is. Almost every day, in the mailbox, is something from Wilmington. shudder (This has nothing to do with the DMV up there. Just one family.)
I had very GOOD DMV experiences in a county near Augusta, Georgia, which really spoiled me what with the purest hell I ran into here. Don’t ever move from someplace with a nice DMV to someplace with a hellish one if you can avoid it. I have a basis for comparison, and one of the very few things I miss about Georgia was the DMV…
I failed my first driving test for going four miles under the speed limit.
Yes, that’s right. Four miles. Under. However, the man generations of teens around here have taken to calling not-so-affectionately ‘Mr. Troll Man’ let me come back later that day and drive around the parking lot once, and ‘let’ me have my license.
God, I wish any of that was false.
Ah, Mamma Tiger on of us isn’t reading that website correctly. What I am reading is
[ul]
[li]One form of identification from list A[/li][li]Two forms proof of residency from List B,[/li][li]Your social security card, and[/li][li]Your out of state driver’s license/or ID card[/li][/ul]
In fact Your social security card appears just about everywhere on that page.
She had her SS card, it was her birth certificate the guy insisted she needed.
I’ve registered cars in eight states and have never had to provide a birth certificate.
I thought that was what he was ranting about 
(I am so glad I live in the UK)
I got my driver’s license late in life as a thirty-something. Fear of driving I think brought on by nearly being hit by a car when I was a kid. Not afraid to ride in one or be near them just driving. Weird but that’s part of being human I think. Got over the fear of driving because I HAD too. Sigh.
Getting back to my DMV story. To even apply for a learner’s permit in NY you have to have proof of identity worth 6 points. This is a list of what each item is worth.
http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/idlicense.htm#idpoints
I only had a birth certificate and a social security card. Uh oh!!! Birth certificate not worth any points, social security card a grand total of 1 (one) point. Rats!!!
Hummm. A welfare card is worth 3 points! Darn, I’m not on welfare… (sarcasm)
I don’t see it here but I’m positive that in the DMV booklet I had back then that a Parole card was also worth 3 points. Nope, not on parole either…(sarcasm)
What to do, what do to…I need a driver’s license to drive the car my dad and I just bought for me to get to work to pay for the car so I can get to work. The irony of that has never ceased to amaze me
Ok. Think. Ahh, a US passport is worth 4 whole points! WOW! So how do you get a passport. Right…first you need proof of ID such as a…yep, drivers license!
I was really in a Catch 22 situation here. I’ll have to read that book one of these days.
Miracles do happen though and I came up with a solution to the passport problem.
When I was 10 my whole family went to Norway tovisit our 6 million relatives there. It seemed like there were 6 million of them at the time. (A whole other story.)
My parents had gotten a passport for my sister, my brother and me (or is that “I”?) It has a cute picture ofthe three of us and it worked since we got to Norway and back okay.
I was able to use that passport, an affidavit(?) from a friend of my mother’s who knew me from when I was born and believe it or not my dog’s license from the town I live in. Yep, that worked because it had my signature on it. Who says the Federal Government doesn’t work in mysterious ways.
New passport in hand along with my birth certificate, social security card and a couple of other things that I can’t remember, I went to the DMV and lo and behold got my learner’s permit, passed the written test, took driving lessons and passed my road test. Well, which ever order that was. Positive the road test was last anyway.
So there you have it. Yours truly is a licensed driver in New York State. Miracles, despite the sate and federal governments actually DO happen.
And believe me, folks, me driving is something I NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS believed would EVER happen.
Wow. I’m still in shock and awe. Just not when I’m driving. Oh, and I don’t take passengers. They are distracting…
Damn, man, I’m never moving back to the US of A. It only took about 2 hours to get my Chinese driver’s licensel…Ain’t capitalism great?
Mama Tiger,
Your mistake was going to Gaithersburhg. G-berg and Glen Burnie are the two most overcrowded MVAs in the state. Ginger got a Md. license in about 20 minutes at Bel Air with her passport and Alberta license as ID. She didn’t even have to take any written or driving tests. She now holds two valid licenses-one from Alberta and one from Md. I tell her if she’s pulled over for speeding here to give the Canadian one and if it there to give her Md. one. I don’t know for sure, but cross the border verification, points, etc… has got to be a PITA, I figure it will increase her chances of getting off with a warning. 
Does anyone know if I’m right in this?
You guys are making me dread the day I have to take my road test to get my license. I thought, “Hey, with all the idiots I see driving, it can’t be that hard, can it?” Now that I read this thread, I see just how wrong I was.
I checked the PennDOT Web site to see what time the DMV opened. 8:30. Well, I took that with a healthy pinch of Kosher salt because, as we have seen, these people are filthy liars. I resolved to arrive early and be, if not the first, one of the first people in line.
I’m a newspaper copy editor. I work second-shift hours from 4 p.m. to midnight, and I don’t like to acknowledge that there is an 8 a.m., let alone that I might one day see the wrong side of it. My Master Plan was the same as the one favored by college students and idiots everywhere: Stay up all night, because it’s easier to stay awake than wake yourself up. Funny, you’d think I would have seen the flaws in this plan (#1: it is stupid; #2: it doesn’t work.) the first 600 times I tried it, but hey, “Live and don’t learn” is fast becoming my personal motto.
So it was a bleary, crabby Juniper who left the house Saturday morning; a Junie who felt like her eyes had been pickled and her skin had been lightly misted with garlic Pam. As I pulled up to the thrice-accursed DVM, my jaw dropped. Because I knew The Line had to be some kind of sleep deprivation-induced hallucination.
It snaked out the door, down the two turns of the wheelchair ramp and halfway across the parking lot. Said parking lot was full, and people were starting to park on neighboring lawns. I have, in all seriousness, seen shorter lines for uber-coaster Raptor at Cedar Point. People in this line brought coolers. This line made me believe that Hell recently privatized and ousourced its Purgatory division to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
So, I queued up. And waited. I hadn’t brought a book because, hey, I was going to be at the front of the line! (Also because books are for smart people and I am stupid, stupid, stupid.) I waited some more. It got to be 8:30, the alleged magic opening time. More waiting. Seasons changed. Italian governments fell, came to power and then fell again. Still, the line did not move.
At 9:00, the line not having moved an inch, I had an epiphany. I was waiting in a line so long that old babushkas who saw it threw up their hands and said, “Yeah, in Russia, line waits on you, but I’ve got a life to lead here people.” If you’ll recall my previous adventure, I was waiting to send a fax to a bank that would mail something to the DMV office. It was Saturday. There was no one at the bank to receive the Holy Fax from the Holy PennDOT fax machine. I was (and probably still am) a Flaming Idiot.
So I drove home and slept for 26 hours. 26 hours. I shit you not. The horror of the line without end and a third trip to the DMV shocked my fragile brain into hibernation.
It’s quarter of one now. If I leave in half an hour, I should be through the line by lunchtime. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s thrilling episode.
God’s honest truth there. I got my first license at the Gaithersburg DMV (Hello, Clopper Road!) and it’s been a mess for the 15 years since.
It’s all about location. Now I’m in VA and when I went to the DMV in Fairfax (near Vienna) it was a mess. But my current one out in sparsely population rural Loudoun it’s a breeze. Sometimes there can be a bit of a wait, sure, but everyone’s friendly and eager to help.
Oh, and Dave? My ex-stepfather (the Iranian) bought himself a performance car in LA (1978 or so) and in the wee small hours cranked it up past 120 on the freeway to see what it could do, past a cop and got pulled over with all that entails. But he started pleading in Farsi (he’s perfectly, if accented, fluent in English) and shoving his international DL at the cop and got off.
Present them with circumstances out of the norm and you’ve got a better shot.
Aren’t they a sweet bunch in G-burg? I went in to have my address changed on my license a couple years ago. The guy behind the counter hands me the form and instructs me to go wait at such-and-such station. Well, there was, of course, a huge ass line, and I waited over an hour for my number to be called. I get up there, hand the guy the form, and he says, “You gotta get this done at one of the express offices. We don’t do this here.”
“Wait a minute,” I say, “this is a full service office. I was given the form at the front desk. Why even have the form available if you don’t do it here??” And he said…
“NEXT!”
:smack:
Just wanted to chime in and express my admiration for the OP’s writing. Copy editor? Hah! You should be writing features. Or a column.
Just brilliant.
At CA DMVs they let you make an appointment to save time. Last time I was there I made an appointment for 9:40, was there at 9, and got to see someone by 11.
And, from the previous page, in CA they require a birth certificate at the DMV to get a driver’s license – a month ago she turned me away (after 2 hours in line, natch) because what I had brought was a notarized copy of my birth certificate instead of the original. A week ago I dug out my original to bring with me and the clerk I dealt with didn’t even ask for it.
Outsourced? At this point, you still think Hell would hire DMV people? Hell no, Hell is the DMV’s staffing agency.
Thank you. For that, I’m not going to hex you again. Your next visit will be short, sweet, and all DMV workers you come into contact with will be cute, enfranchised, and gruntled.
Funny you should say that, as my visit this morning was very short. Didn’t even get out of the car. Because nothing makes my day more than driving to the DMV at 7 a.m. only to find that they’re closed on Mondays!!!
I will have these people’s stony hearts for paperweights. I will play badmitton with the souls of their firstborns.
Did I tell you that I’m that genie that was on the X-Files that always gives you what you ask for, but never what you want?
Okay, they open in an hour. I’m going in, and when I come out, I’m either going to have a drivers license (birth certificate came express mail yesterday) or a PennDOT employee’s spleen in my hand.
Oh, what the heck. Why settle for just one?