Come On Feel The Illinoi-ance

I know of this wrongdoer who learned the irritating way that the glorious State of Illinois takes a driver’s license as bond after doling out a measly speeding ticket (14 over on the highway? Isn’t that just doing everyone a favor?). In the esteemed County of Will (a.k.a. jolie Joliet), the wrongdoer pays the ticket plus another fifty bones to sign up for driving school in the hopes of keeping her sins off the record books. Once the wrongdoer’s all paid up and feeling 10 feet tall, Will County gives her the false sense that they are in the process of mailing her driver’s license back to her.

In reality, to make that 14 mph folly complicate her life as much as humanly possible, they never actually mail the license back. Instead, there’s a city employee who throws it atop a mound of seized licenses, occasionally glancing at the pile with a look of mischievous pride before setting fire to it. Alternatively, the license is mailed to a random address plucked from the phonebook. Just for fun. Those phonebooks don’t get enough use these days anyway, and this maneuver has the added consequence of leaving the evildoer with (1) a visit to the DMV (the horah), (2) the fear that her identity is at risk for theft (good luck getting credit with this identity), (3) multiple paranoid printings of her credit report, and (4) a credit protection bureau membership that will raise the complication levels to ever more dizzying heights. Mission accomplished, Will.i.am. You think you’re so smart.

I popped in to the DMV on my way back from court today. It seemed the prudent thing to do. Of course nobody just “pops” in to the DMV. More like wading through smelly garbage. Or drowning. But I put on the ole patience cap, which I save for very special mind-numbing and nerve-plucking occasions.

In line to verify my documentation, I made a friend. He was queued up behind me, but I could hear his breath as if I had him on piggyback. He was a sweet guy with a disability of some kind. Prone to intense staring, he found and spoke his words at a slow and steady pace, and there was much repetition. But he eventually managed to tell me that he liked my shoes. see above. He liked them very much. So much that he couldn’t stop staring at them for even a split second.

He asked me where I got them (Wisconsin), when I got them (last summer), what brand they were (Franco Sarto), and then asked if he could “see them” (record scratches). He could see them just fine from where he stood, but I didn’t want to be rude, so I struck a little jazz pose with my left foot. The lady behind me giggled. When I realized he meant that he wanted to see them OFF my foot, I politely declined.

After my friend’s documentation was approved, he found a seat directly in front and to the left of me where he sat and promptly craned his neck around to continue his shoe gazing. I had ticket A080. Friend had A081. DMV was on A060. I was pleasantly surprised when it took just 60 minutes for me to make it to the counter (and twenty recitations from my friend that he was “now XX turns away from getting a new license!”).

Once my ticket was called, friend and my shoes said their good-byes and went their separate ways. They exchanged a few more friendly jazz points and stares as they passed each other in line at the cashier and then at the photo stand. But that was that. Parting is such sweet sorrow.... Unless you’re at the DMV... in patent leather heels.