If you wanna go 'n take a ride wit me...

So here's a humorous little ditty from about a week ago that I never got around to telling.

I should have known from the start what evil humbuggery awaited me after the phone call from Geico. I told the salesman "I come from NY where we have the DMV, then moved to MA where we had the RMV. Where to now?" To which he laughingly responded "Indiana has a BMV. B for Bureau." A light rain started to fall. The sun of my heart was setting.

I rode to the BMV with Erin in tow. Every _MV trip needs a wing(wo)man; someone with whom to kvetch about the long wait; someone with whom to mock the ex-hippie cyclist with the leather jacket and no shirt. Today was no different.

The line stretched to the horizon, or what would pass for the horizon in these parts on a rain-soaked day such as this. We rode in like Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei in "My Cousin Vinny" ( "Oh yeah, you blend"), hair tossed to the wind, freedom in front of us, a head full of bad memories behind...

The woman at the counter, the first counter that is, asked for my identification. While the drivers license itself was high on the list of priorities, I also needed to register my car in the state, so the two different transactions seemed to stimy the poor woman who must have had a sugar deficiency in her diet, or might have benefited from one, I suppose. After a few minutes of blank staring at the documents laid out in front of her, she finally decided to tackle the drivers license first.

Now, I come from NY and MA, two of the worst trafficed states in America. Both states have declared at one point or another that I am fit to operate a vehicle in some of the worst driving conditions known to modern transportation. However, in the state of Indiana, a state who just raised their speed limit to 70 mph, a state who boasts 10 stoplights across the vast abyss of a corn field they call a state, a state who, should nuclear winter hit, would show absolutely no signs of population or teraform change, in the great state of Indiana, in order to transfer my license over from MA to IN, I need to pass an eye exam (reasonable) as well as a 50-question written exam.

Now I'll be honest with you. I'm a book smart kind of guy. I test well. Not standardized tests, but test-tests... you know, legitimate ones. But when I first got my license in the mid 90s (in fact, exactly 11 years ago from last week), I passed a 6 question exam on the back of a Long John's Silver placemat in White Plains. Now, I'm not saying New York didn't have it's act together, but I will say that it's not like I studied for the written exam back then.

The sky overhead rumbled with thunder and the pitter patter of rain on the roof of the shack they called a "bureau" was palpable. So I sit down in the dank asylum, pencil in hand, and rummage through the questions. I give you a sample question, paraphrased, but as close to the actual question I can get:

What do you do when a school bus stops in front of you:

1. Zoom past like you would any car that stops in front of you
2. Ignore it, the stop sign on the side of the bus is not for you
3. Come to a complete stop and wait for the bus to turn off it's flashers and proceed.
4. All of the above

While the absurdity of such a simplistic question is apparent, I just want to know one thing: who chooses answer 4?

Long story short, I failed. I got all the questions right in the first part, but missed a number of "signs" questions. Apparently I didn't know the difference between a "regulatory" sign and an "informational" sign, and as such, I am unqualified to get a license in the state of Indiana. So they handed me back my paperwork, told me i could retake the test tomorrow, and gave me back my MA driver's license.

I got back in my car and drove home.

Anyone else see the flaw in the system here? Also, there was no rain. It was a metaphor for the raging storm within my soul. It works on a few levels. Think about it.