Once Upon a Time at the DPS

This is a true story.  Well, it's based on a true story.  It perhaps has an exaggeration or two, but...well, it's a mostly true story.  (Cue the "Law and Order" music - DUN DUN!!!!)

My daughter finished Driver's Ed and had been driving with her permit for about a YEAR and we were ready to take the FINAL road test and get her license.  Now, I remember going at lunch time ON MY BIRTHDAY when I turned 16.  I took the test and still had time to go through the Arby's drive thru on my way back to school.  No joke.   But, as parents always like to say...."Times have changed since I was a kid!!!"  What follows is my rendition of our trip to.... the Department of Public Safety or as I will commonly refer to it - Hades.

All my friends had given me SO MUCH wonderful advice on Facebook.  Seriously - I love my online friends and they had great advice.  Somehow, Friend A just "walked on in" to this office and was out in 20 minutes!  Friend B arrived VERY early to the SUPERCENTER, and was one of the first 10 "Walk-ins" so they were in and out quickly.  Apparently, I am everyone's Friend C because I didn't have this happy-happy - joy-joy- skip- into- the- office- with- a- basket- of- goodies- and- come- out- with- a- shiny- new- driver's- license- for- my- daughter experience.  Let me tell you about it.

It began on the phone - not talking to anyone mind you - just listening to ringing, busy signals and a WONDERFUL system that tells you to press this and press that and then transfers you to an office in Botswana that is only open on Thursday mornings when the moon is full in a leap year.  Soooo... I decided to follow the lead of one friend who took her daughter to the small town of Gainesville, TX and just do a walk-in test.  Sounds so easy, right?

We drive the hour north, just below the Oklahoma border and find the DPS office.  We go in and every chair is full with people stacked on each other like fish in a barrel.  Well...perhaps a slight exaggeration.  We take a paper number from the number machine and lean against the wall, trying to look casual with everyone facing you looking as bored as if  - well...as if they were at the DPS office!  Finally, a lady comes out with a clipboard!

Now, I am a HUGE follower of clipboards.  I believe that someone with a clipboard = someone with authority.  I LOVE when I, myself, have a clipboard.  POWER!!!!  So I, of course, went up to clipboard lady and asked if we were in the right place to wait for the road test.  "Oh, we don't take walk-ins anymore," she says with a cackle in her voice and an evil gleam in her eye!  I think I even heard snakes hissing behind the counter in agreement and pleasure at my chagrinned face. 

She then tells me that perhaps a 'third party tester' would be better for us, i.e. pay $100 and let someone else do the job the government trained her office to do. 

I smile - probably the fakest I've ever mustered - thanked her and turned to walk away.  I could feel tears of frustration already coming and my daughter was great, telling me it's all good, I don't care, etc.  After a few choice complaints about "The Man" holding us down, we left to drive the hour back home.  On the way, we called the Garland SUPERCENTER and listened to the outgoing message.  

The recording asked if I wanted to get in line over the phone so I didn't have to wait at their office!  HERE was the happy-happy-joy-joy!!!  I could wait at my house (or in this case, driving back through the top of Texas) and they would let me know when I should come up!  HOORAH!!!  (This is sarcastic foreshadowing, folks.  Any literary scholar can tell you that.)

I kid you not, here's the recording to get in line:

If you're calling for directions or the address, press one.  If you're calling for information about vehicle registration, press two.  If you are calling to obtain a first time driver's license, press 3.  With sheer, triumphant elation I pressed three like nobody has EVER pressed three before!!! 

The recording then said  (and I SWEAR I heard snickering from the recording..) Thank you.  There are 82 people in line ahead of you.  Your wait time is approximately 140 minutes.  We will notify you as your time gets closer.  Yep.  82.  But 140 minutes wasn't bad!  We could drive home, pick up my mom and still make it to Grand Prairie to the SUPERCENTER in time for our arrival at the supreme DPS Royal Court Area of Licenses.

So...we drove to Grand Prairie and I realize I never pressed one to get the address.  We pulled off the highway (because of course, I'm demonstrating GREAT driving to my almost-independently-driving-daughter) and I called back.  This time, I press one. 

It's hard to describe the utter feeling of gloom that swept over my entire being as I heard the recording NOT say SUPERCENTER in Grand Prairie, Tx, but instead, GARLAND, TX.  OH SWEET MERCY!!!!  I have mixed up the "G-A-R"s in the name of the city and in my frustration, didn't listen closely to the location.  We are close to Six Flags and the Texas Rangers' own ballpark.  The SUPERCENTER is not.  It is far.  Far away in another land.

Once again, my daughter tries to soothe me and tell me we can do it another day.  I know, however, she's nervous and just trying to get out of it and by now, I'm more determined than ever to get her to the DPS office!  The recording tells us we still have 45 minutes and my GPS tells me we are only 34 minutes away. Off we go!

It's somewhere around DFW airport that the laughter begins to take over my body.   I sound like a cross between Jack Nicholson in the Shining and Snoopy and I just can't stop laughing.  Tears begin to fall down my face and my mom, from the backseat, says to my daughter, "Uh-oh...I think you're mom's slipped over the edge."  My daughter looks at me like only a teenager can - you know the look - as if someone just asked her the square root of 5,467 and she doesn't want to do it.

SO  - we go the 34  minutes - a little longer because of course by now, we were running out of gas and had to stop - and we finally arrive at the GARLAND SUPERCENTER Texas DPS.  I see rays of sunshine shooting out of the roof and hear John Williams-esque music loudly playing in my head.  We're HERE!  And we are IN LINE!!!!

We all three walk in the front door with the confident air of your average peacock and walk up to - you guessed it - a man with a CLIPBOARD!  Recognizing and bowing to the power of the clipboard, I smile up at him with the hope of a newborn baby with the future ahead of her.  He looks at me and says in a low, menacing, 'James Earle Jones gone bad' voice, "Are you in line by phone?"  I look at him with utter pride, stood up straight and said... "YES!"  "For what?" he says. 

"Please sir...if it pleases the court....my daughter wishes to obtain a license to drive." And he literally looks at me with more pity than I deserved (because remember, the extra trip to Grand Prairie was totally my fault) and says...."We don't take walk-ins."

"WHAT?!"  I shriek, turning a few heads.  "But...I pressed THREE!  I pressed it perfectly!  I pressed it with panache! I pressed it with FLAIR!  It said it was for first time driver's licenses!" 

The man looked at me as one would look at a victim of a shark attack and said "That's for permits, not licenses."  I didn't hear much of what he said after that because as my mom had foretold - I was over the edge.  The SUPERCENTER did not live up to it's name.  It was NOT SUPER.  I'm not sure it was even an actual CENTER of anything!

As I worked to hold back tears of so many emotions I couldn't count, he was saying something to me about doing "third party testing" just like the lady in Gainesville.  It must be a phrase that's part of the Clipboard Training Program they attend.

Well, in an effort to shorten this up a bit more, I'll summarize the next parts of the saga.  We got a call from one of the many numbers we had tried , saying that they had a cancellation for the road test and would we like to take the spot?  I said "Yes!" not even caring when it was, so we went the next day and paid $75...at a third party tester.  I TOLD you the power of the Clipboard, prophesy and all!

Even taking the test in the RAIN, my daughter passed with somewhat flying colors (parallel parking is a challenge for most humans in history).  The next day, we would go BACK to the DPS to obtain the actual printed license.  I shuddered at the thought.

THIS TIME, wise to the schemes and plots of the DPS underworld, I told her we'd be getting up at 6:00 am to get in line.  She looked at me again with that same look, but didn't argue.  We took our lawn chairs and were at the door of the local DPS by 6:20 am.  Alone.  We had some nice chat time and watched the sun rise over the government building that held the final quest for the driver's license holy grail. 

The next people arrived at 6:40, then 6:45 and we all began to chat and bond over our various reasons for sitting on a sidewalk waiting for Hades to open its doors.  By 7:55 before it opened, there - and this is NO exaggeration - were about 75 people in line!  I felt so brilliant!  I felt so wise!  I felt like perhaps I had earned my very OWN clipboard of power with my decision to camp out. 

I leaned over to my daughter and whispered, "When we go inside, it's on the second floor.  You break right, I'll break left and one of us will go the right direction.  We can't let ANYONE get in our way of this final quest."  (Cue 'The Look' again.)

At precisely 8:00 am, the hope to which I had clung for two days began to peek out again as the security guard came to unlock the gates of The Unknown.   Before allowing us entry, she said in the voice of an angel, "If you're going to the Driver's License Department, turn left at the top of the stairs."  LEFT!  LEFT!  We didn't have to race, split up and strategize.  She was giving us our final challenge!

I am proud to say that I did NOT run over anyone, push any children or yell anything to anyone as I briskly walked up the stairs and remained the FIRST ONE IN this now enormous line.

And I tell you.... after a little paperwork, a fingerprint scan and me paying a little more money, she handed my daughter her license.  I looked at the clerk with the look of a parched man seeing a mirage.  "Really?"  I ask.  "That's all?"  I wanted to climb across the desk and hug her, but I remembered the hissing snakes behind the desk in Gainesville and figured they probably had their own security team somewhere, so I simply said "Thank you."

I walked out into the morning light, only 18 minutes after we'd walked in. It was glorious.  We had succeeded.  We....were...victorious!  I could swear I heard the John Williams-esque theme song to our escapade start up again and thought about how I was DONE!  FINISHED!  NO MORE!  

Then it hit me - like a ton of bricks.  I have another daughter.  To quote the great theologian, Yoda, "There is another."

So I called and scheduled her road test appointment for March, 2021.

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