‘A bureaucratic nightmare with a happy ending’
Have you heard about Enhanced Drivers Licenses? Or a Real ID? Basically, you need one or the other to board a plane starting in May. I keep getting the two mixed up, but, but decided to spring for the more expensive one “just in case” and also since I really really don’t want to go to the DMV again anytime soon. You will, no doubt, relate when you hear my sad story.
Of course, writing about a visit to the DMV is not nearly as sad as writing about the death of one’s parent, so there’s that. But it’s also not nearly as cheery as writing about Mr. Baby. So before I start, I’ll share a couple of recent adorable baby pics.
Okay. That’s done. Now for the DMV.
I live partly in New York City and partly in Amagansett, so I have a choice of DMV experiences. I could take the subway to the DMV near Macy’s, which I used to do until a really mean DMV employee fixed me with an icy stare and refused to accept my the paperwork for my Vespa title-transfer because Dude Man’s signatures didn’t match. (Or didn’t match enough for her purposes.) At that point I had been waiting in three separate lines for hours, so I did the only reasonable thing: I burst into inconsolable tears and vowed never to darken that DMV door again.
I took my non-matching paperwork instead to the DMV nearest Amagansett, which is in Riverhead. This is the same Riverhead of getting-lost fame, which inspired my story, “Okay, you know where the jail is, right?” Which is pretty hilarious, if I do say so myself.
Now, Riverhead may not be a simple subway ride away — it takes 50 minutes by car — but in Riverhead, at least in my experience, the people are nice. When I showed my City-disputed paperwork to the woman at the counter, she not only didn’t fix me with a mean icy stare, she smiled and wished me a good day. After accepting said paperwork.
There also were no crowds, no lines, no hassle whatsoever. But this time was different. I supposed I should have realized something was up when I tried to make an online appointment and all the dates in the calendar were grayed out — through June. Must be a computer glitch, I told myself before hopping in the car at 7:00 Monday morning. The office opened at 7:30, but I figured getting there at 8:00 would be fine.
Not so, it would seem. The place was jammed to its bureaucratic gills. They did accept walk-ins, thank the scheduling gods, so I took a number — WU016 — and settled down to wait. After about 15 minutes, it was called. Wow, I thought! I’ll be home by 9:00!
Hah. That was just the guy taking my picture. That done, he instructed me — nicely — to wait for my number to be called again.
Well. They had nineteen “service desks,” and numbers were being called mere seconds apart. I had brought a New Yorker for a distraction, but I couldn’t look at it for fear I would be so distracted I’d miss my number being called. So I just sat there, staring at the screen displaying the numbers like a zombie — and like everybody else there.
To complicate things, I felt the urge to visit the ladies’ room (or whatever it’s called in a DMV…”rest area?”… “parking spot?”) I gave myself till 10:00, and if my number wasn’t called, I’d risk it.
Sure enough, the clock registered 10:00 and good ole WU016 was called to Service Desk 11, where a young man with dreadlocks greeted me with a smile. Examining my paperwork, he admitted that my ConEd bill reminded him of a Dylan song. (“Joey”, I think he said it was called.) So we talked Dylan some. For a guy who was in his thirties he was remarkably well-informed. He even knew the scene in Don’t Look Back where Donovan is completely intimidated by Dylan’s playing.
He said that he had been to a Grateful Dead concert when he was three — his parents were Deadheads (!) He was also a fount of knowledge about Jim Morrison and Leonard Cohen, and commiserated when I told him I was not allowed to hitchhike with my boyfriend to Woodstock.

The boyfriend who hitchhiked to Woodstock. Read about him in “Larry and the Nose Holes”
I told him he was about the same age as The Child, but that The Child didn’t realize the significance of living in Haight-Ashbury. Which is where she, in fact, lives. He asked at one point if I wanted 5’6″ on my new license (I had put 5’4″ on the form) and told me his mom was having the same issue with shrinking. (See “Skirting the Issue” for more on that.)
Well. Crowds or no crowds, lines or no lines, that little dreadlocked deadhead baby sure made my DMV Day. He even knew where the ladies’ room was.
New York City. April 2025