Not Quite A Passport But...

So yesterday I realized that my driver license expired on my birthday, three days ago. I jumped in the car and drove VERY CAREFULLY to the DMV. Driving without a license means you are also driving without car insurance. That is not a smart thing to do, in fact it is illegal, as I was told by the DMV employee. All I had to do was pay $75, get a new photo taken, and voila, painless... unless you are an idiot like me and tell them about another drivers license (you think) you have in the state of Tennessee.

First of all you have to understand the process for me to even get the TN license. I waited in two separate Nashville area DMV's, got denied from the first two, then drove an hour north of the city to eventually sit in another two hour line up. Ignorance played a HUGE part in why I didn't get the driving permit in the first two places. To keep it short, here in BC, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia is the government, (and controls everything). When I need to show a drivers abstract, my driving record, it comes from them, ICBC, (the government.). This isn't the case in Ontario, or many other Canadian provinces, but all I can say is this: If you unaware of how things work in other places (country's, provinces, states, whatever it may be), that's fine, but take the time to learn about them, and DO NOT DENY the application due to your own ignorance. ICBC is not my insurance company, it is the government from whom all driving records flow. This month long process, and without a TN license = no TN insurance = no driving a car in an extremely non-bus-friendly city = easily one of the most frustrating processes of my existence.

Ok, now knowing that... imagine accidentally divulging the info that you have a TN license, and the lady at the DMV telling you that you need to give it to them in order for you to get a new Canadian one. I'm not giving it up, not a chance, I worked hard for it. I say that "there is no way for me to get it to her", or "I don't know where it is", or "it could be in boxes from the move back to Canada three years ago"... meanwhile slipping it out of my wallet and into my pocket. Eventually she says "I need that number or I can't drive." Now I've gone too far in this web of lies that I can't pull it out of my pocket and give her the number, so I had to think, and besides, sitting there and looking distraught may help me? Maybe she'll give in and just forget I said anything at all? I can't drive back home 'to look for it', so I say I'll go back to the car and call my wife, in hopes that maybe she can find it? In the car I write down my TN license number, think of a great way to tell the clerk how 'organized my wife is' and that she amazingly found the number in a matter of minutes. I even fake a phone call to Leana just in case the lady is watching me out her window... and then I notice something on the card... expiry date Jan 23, 2007. I do not hold another drivers license.

I go back in, wait in another line, and get to another employee.

"Do you hold another drivers license somewhere else?"

"No" I reply.

"Great, you'll get your card in the mail in a week or so."

I'm an idiot.