Barstow DMV

One of the things that’s really starting to harsh my mellow about the upcoming milestone birthday is all of the freaking paperwork. I’m hitting the age where taking my Social Security payments is mandatory, and all of that has taken hours of filling out forms. And after decades of just renewing my driver’s license online or by mail (I have a nearly spotless driving record and no accidents), not I have to show up in the flesh to prove I’m alive, take an eye exam, and get a new picture taken.

Going into any California DMV office and simply getting in line is an excellent way to spend all day there, so I tried to make an appointment, as they encourange you to do. Except that all of the offices near hear had their earliest open appointments in mid-April or even early May, which won’t work with my birthday in mid-March. Rather than just accept my fate of a full day wasted in boredom Hell, it occurred to me that I could look for other DMV offices further out of the Los Angeles area. Hesperia’s sort of on the edge of the “LA Metro area” – what’s the next step out?

Barstow. (“Jewel of the Desert” my ass!!)

It’s an interesting shift in perspective. I don’t think that I’ve EVER thought of Barstow as anything other than a spot on the I-15 about halfway between LA and Las Vegas or LA and Lake Havasu, a spot you zoomed through at 70+ mph unless of course you had to pull off a block or two for gas, food, or a bio break. But now, as Hesperia and Victor Valley (Hesperia + Apple Valley + Victorville) residents, Barstow is a neighbor, just a quick half hour away. Where before the mental picture was of an endless ribbon of concrete through the barren desert to get from the Cajon Pass to Barstow to Baker to Las Vegas, all looking the same, rocks, tumbleweeds, mountains, and rattlesnakes, now it’s just ten miles through neighborhoods we drive through all the time, then another fifteen or so miles through desert just like the landscape outside our yard, then you’re in the outskirts of Barstow and back to “civiliztion” with outlet malls, McDonalds, Starbucks, gas stations, and stucco jungle neighborhoods of houses carved out of the sand.

It was definitely weird seeing the difference in viewpoint.

The DMV was…the DMV. The stereotypes, memes, and jokes (sloths, anyone?) didn’t spring out of a vacuum. I will say that the four DMV staff that I interacted with were all pleasant, efficient, and friendly, and we got things done quickly once I got to their windows. The system (which isn’t their fault!) to get me TO their windows is totally fucked, and in between the small handful of two minute interactions were twenty and forty minute exercises in wanting to claw my eyeballs out just to dispell the boredom and ennui.

But it’s done.

Another task checked off, and another government agency giving me permission to be older than I was. Seven decades of living to satisfy the bureaucracies just for the sake of satisfying the bureaucracies.

Joy.