Illinois Citizens

We went down for a hot date to the DMV last night. There’s a branch in North Chicago that was open until 7 PM, so D left work at 4 and we drove on down there. It took about 30 minutes on the titles and 2 hours on the drivers licenses. For our bit of absurd dada comedy of the day, at one point we are sitting in the chairs waiting to be called. We know there is a written test coming up, and we want to cram with the Illinois driver info book. However, the only copies we can find are in Spanish or Polish. We decided we’d do better with the Spanish, so for 10 minutes or so we were studying for the test in a language we don’t read. It was just like all those anxiety dreams I have. After a little while, we found English copies and could cram in our native tongue. I decided to keep my dormant motorcycle endorsement alive. I haven’t ridden one in ten years, but I’ve had it on my license continuously since then, through four state changes. I had to take two written tests, the regular one plus the motorcycle one. The DMV women assured me when I handed it to her for grading that unless I had studied for it in the book, I couldn’t pass. I agreed that it was quite hard, and I just tried to use common sense and my ancient memories of leaning and braking. I had to stop and think about which hand the clutch was on and which foot did the shifting. As it was, I barely passed, missing 3 out of 15, the very edge of passing. Now finally we can write checks at the Jewel/Osco without getting the skunk eye for our Georgia licenses.