EUREKA’S ASSHOLE

How to Piss Off Every Last Patron of the Rancho Bernardo DMV

“Lousy local conditions” drive home a parenting truism

I needed to update my driver license.

We’d just moved to California from Washington with our three young kids and a minivan full of shit. Camping along the drive, for some hideous reason I fail to recollect.

It was summer, I guess. But still.

We now lived near Joe’s family. My father-in-law was going to help with the kids while I went to the DMV. I wasn’t looking forward to it. At best, the DMV offices in the grand, chaotic state of California were reputed to be, as Perez Hilton would say, “whoreanus.” [external link]

Even without kids in tow who were not quite 4, not quite 3, and 1.5, the DMV was gonna be far less fun than camping.

My father-in-law forgot he was supposed to babysit. Wasn’t available, as of 20 minutes before my appointment.

This was predictable. I hadn’t reminded him, and he is generally a busy guy.

I was screwed. My mother-in-law was working, as were my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. We didn’t have any local friends or babysitters yet. Joe was at his brand-new job.

The next available new-license appointment was months out, with absolutely no available slots at branches within an hour’s drive. I’d let my Washington license expire a month prior, since we were moving anyway! Rescheduling the damn appointment would have made me even later to renew.

And either way, the experience would probably suck.

Dammit.

Well, whatever, I thought. I’ve dealt with itty bitty kids without much help from family for upwards of four years. I’ve got this.

Things were going about as well as you’d expect. The kids were unable to sit in chairs — or to stand in my vicinity even somewhat non-ferally. They took turns escaping my reach and pushing the DMV chairs out of their carefully-arranged rows.

It was ambiently loud in there. But the noise of heavy steel on tile was like the scene with Will Smith in the egg-chair Men in Black.

And it’s sick and wrong that an “appointment” at a California DMV still means you have to wait in line.

I tried to corral the kids. I really did. My arms were pretty muscular from wrangling small people, and it was NBD to grab one or two of them and force them to chill. But we were in what parenting experts call “lousy local conditions” — an overwhelming place, with little chance for their compliance.

I should also mention that I was 25 at the time and must also have seemed fuzzy on the concept of “children,” what with this clear lack of parenting finesse.

John and Wes eventually calmed down. They stayed nearby after I threatened to make them sit with me. But Easter was 18 months old. Read: too young to listen, but old enough to be feisty. She yelled and tried to get the fuck away from my embrace as soon as my buttcheeks hit the seat. I kept having to get up and chase her.

“Never have more babies than you can carry at once,” someone had warned me. The enlightened minds behind Winning Ways to Talk With Young Children wouldn’t have approved of the scene, either.

Refusal to follow directions must be genetic.

I “won” the kids’ cooperation for long enough to get my number called. All I had to do now was give them the stupid paper, show my stupid Washington license, and take a stupid eye exam. Then we’d be done with this crap.

I carried one child under each arm, barked at my oldest to follow, and went up to the counter with my dog-eared paperwork.

“You have to take a written test,” the lady said.

“Now?” yelped I.

Christ.

A small fleet of computers stood nearby on a U-shaped group of tables. People silently sat at the desks and took their tests.

I’m a good test-taker and I even kind of know how to drive, I remembered. And besides, I was balls-deep in this lipsticked hog. True or False — there was no pulling out now.

By the skin of my pale Seattle ass, I passed! But not before my children scooted away from their spots on the floor next to me and crawled around gleefully beneath the other test-takers’ computers.

I dragged the kids over to the eye exam area and held two of them tightly by the wrist as I irritably read the letters.

Eureka! I could now drive children to the San Diego libraries legally. For more parenting books. Maybe some “camping fun for the family” ones, too. And for sure a copy of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. Because I was definitely the asshole in the DMV that day.

Shout-whispering the F-word to toddlers is good parenting, right?

FALSE.

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