I’m sure at some point you have had the opportunity to walk into a state Motor Vehicle Agency. Not a great experience in my opinion. Well, I have had the occasion recently which will leave my family not like it was before that date. We went in, myself and my twin boys, and the feeling I got was cold and distant. People working there are working by remote control, robot like. Going through their daily chores with boredom and agony. They’re not really mad at the world, they’re past that. It’s a state of depression. A smile or anything positive is never seen. Wrong or not, I waited to give my children the opportunity to drive on their 16th birthday. I found during that junior year of high school that anything I asked them to do was dismissed as spoiled, irresponsible adolescent laziness, amongst other great adjectives, and the opportunity to drive was my enticement to get them to do what they needed to do and perhaps instill a sense of responsibility. It didn’t work. When asked to do something, such as study for the SAT, they said they didn’t care about driving. They said that for a year. (Actually it’s one that answers, the other one doesn’t bother answering.)
So finally on their 17th birthday I gave in and we walked into the Motor Vehicle Agency with all the necessary documents to get a drivers permit. Suddenly they were interested in driving; they were unbelievably excited. After getting past the receptionist, we had the luck to be assisted by a Motor Vehicle Agency employee with a personality. I was shocked. But we answered her small talk questions about the boys and driving etc. (when you have twins this happens sometimes) and finally she handed us the two permits. I saw her ability to furnish us with two permits was a little bit of an effort because, perhaps, it required some extra thought processing. Plus the conversational skills must have overloaded her ability to concentrate for those few minutes. Bottom line, she never told us that what she handed us really wasn’t a permit. We found out later we needed to go to another Motor Vehicle Agency to complete the permit and then be able to practice driving before setting up a road test. Without knowing this, we walked out of the office and practiced driving for 6 months. We also had driving instructors during this time who also never told the boys about the permits or the road tests.
Six months later I went to make a drivers test appointment. I couldn’t do it online for some reason. Finally, I spoke to someone and they told me to go into the office. I went back to the same miserable office. The receptionist knew as much as I did. She thought it was the same numbers that I thought are necessary to make the appointment. She was angry that I told her that I tried that and it didn’t work. She sent me to the line I went to before, six months before. I waited my turn.
This lady behind the counter gave me a look. I can’t really describe this look. It wasn’t exactly hateful. It was the ugliest expression I ever saw. Probably a combination of anger and disgust. This was before I even spoke to her. I was just waiting on line! She was the supervisor. She didn’t understand my situation. She only knew what she does, nothing more. I needed to go to another office. You see, there was this other stamp that had to be on the other side of this paper, so even if we did everything we were supposed to do, there was nothing nobody could do to help us. There’s more to this story. There’s more employees and supervisors I had the opportunity to deal with in person, on the phone, and in letters. Including my son’s beautiful letters to Rush Holt and others. But even before all that, immediately, I needed to answer my children’s questions about government agencies, state governments, and governments in general and how they are run and their employees.
The employees of the Motor Vehicle Agency only know their own little, horrible job, not the big picture, not helping the customer, the agency, the taxpayer who pays their salary.
Yeah, there was another step that we left out and I didn’t carefully check, anticipating them screwing me up because, really, I, in affect left the responsibility to my children. In the 17 years olds’ defense and in my defense; no, Motor Vehicle does not tell you this in their documentation. You need a magnifying glass to find this out. I’m sure this is not the best way to teach children about responsibility and the government’s inability to run anything or the fact that government is not equipped or should not be responsible for its citizens.
The same week that my children were about to have a breakdown over this ordeal we needed to go to three different doctors for three different injuries on three different body parts. This is what happens when your children play sports. It took a little maneuvering with school schedules and team practices and the fact that they don’t have licenses to drive themselves there. Additionally, it was tricky, but doable, to schedule because Orthopedic doctors specialize in specific body parts. Now one boy is in physical therapy and might need surgery in the future. The other is sitting on the sport’s team bench waiting for his next doctor’s appointment and his injury to get better.
Injuries are hard to endure, especially when it’s your children’s injuries. Can you imagine when the government has control over that part of our life too?
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