I was at the DMV today because I had to renew my license. It has been eight years since I’ve been in the DMV for this reason beacuse the pandemic made it so I didn’t have to do it in 2020. I did it online and just used the same picture. I was relieved because I always have trouble with the eye test. I wear glasses. I got my eyes tested after I got out of the hospital in September of 2021. I should get them tested again because apparently, you’re supposed to get them tested every two years. But no matter how careful I am wiht the eye test, I always end up not being able to see clearly.
It’s funny. Rory from RKG famously refused to get glasses for several years, even though he had a hard time seeing what was on the TV. He was squinting furiously in the early seasons of Prepare To Try. When they put out their Demon’s Souls Retry, he finally got his glasses. He showed them off in the final episode. He said that that it was weird to look through them, and Krupa assured him that it would just take a few days to get used to them. Which was what the person at the glass shop told Rory as well.
Except, as Rory later explained, it never got better. He failed his eye test for his motorcycle license because everything was fuzzy. He went back to the doc to get his eyes tested (this was two years later), and he can see more clearly now.
I have never seen clearly. With or without glasses. There has always been a fuzziness around the edges, and I just asusmed it’s a quirk of my eyes. I can get by with different tricks, but I was still stressed about the eye test at the DMV. I understood why they wanted to make sure you could read, but most signs on the road are huge. It’s not like I’m going to miss the ginormous exit sign as I’m driving.
I got to the DMV around 12:30 p.m. It was packed, which I was expecting. It’s a DMV that serves a rough neighborhood and is tiny. And it was Friday. I had about 15 people before me–or so I thought. I quickly realized that because of naming system for the tickets, there were more like 25 people before me. And only three or four people working at a time.
I watched the different workers and noticed something interesting. One of them was a very by the book kind of person. They followed everrything in the manual to a tee. They asked each person if they needed the glasses they were wearing to drive. They told a guy who was renewing his motorcycle license that he needed a number he said he had never been asked for before. They watched like a hawk as a person took the eye test (assuming they were reading along with the person being tested).
I did not want this person to be the one testing me.
There was another person who wasn’t even looking at the person testing or the computer in front of them (on which I assumed was the line the tester was reading). It was clear they did not care if the person got the right letters or not. This is the person I wanted to test me.
Then, there was an old woman who came in and got her number. She seemed confused and doddering. She asked if the wait was short. I told her I had been there for an hour already. She went to sit down next to a very chatty man. Then, she went to the bathroom and apparently lost her number. One fo the women at the counter called out a number that was five before mine (in my line of numbers). The guy said he thought it was the older woman’s number, but she had gone to the bathroom. He kept insisting it was her number, and when the old woman came out, he noisily pushed her to take the spot. He said he was pretty sure her number was the one that had been called.
It was not. As I said, it was 5 numbers before mine. There was no way the old woman had a number before mine. But what was I going to do? Throw a fit and make a fuss? No. I was fuming, though, because Ihad forgot to bring a Kind bar, and I was hungry.
The woman was there to renew her license. When she took her eye test, she hesitated over the letters. Then, when she was asked if she saw the flashing light on the right/left or both, she said right for the first one, then left for the second one. The worker paused for a long time, then said, “Is that the only light you see?” at the same time the woman rushed to say she also saw one on the right. The worker waited a beat and then said in a doubtful tone that the woman had passed.
She should not have passed. It was clear that she was confused and maybe could not see too well.
This is the person I wanted to help me. And, thankfully, she was the person I got. I did my best to read the fuzzy letters, but I’m not sure I got them all right. She did not care. Or maybe I did get them all right! And I got the flashing lights, thankfully, which I was worried about, too, beacuse my peripheral vision is not great.
In the end, it turned out just fine. Except having to choose between female and non-binary as my gender. I don’t feel like either, but I reluctantly chose female just because I did not want to deal with it. Other than that, though, all that worrying was for nothing. But I was lucky not to get the hard-assed person to help me because they migth not have passed me on the eye test. Now, however, I can continue going to Cubs with impunity!