Want To Get the Life Sucked Out of You?

Go to the Department of Public Safety in Norman.

First of all, it's damned near impossible to see from the road--just a poorly-marked door between a "laundry-mat" and a convenience store. There are forty people in the waiting room with disgruntlement floating in a noxious cloud over their heads. The one person behind the counter is taking care of everything, including written driver's tests, and has the calmest demeanor I've ever experienced. Thirty-seven hundred times someone would walk up to his counter and ask questions that were answered on a sign they had to walk past to get to him, and thirty-seven hundred times he calmly recited the instructions on the sign.

When we walked in shortly after 10:30 this morning the sign showed he was serving customer number 16. Michele became number 26 and I signed on as 27.

When we left--just after 12:30, having taken all of five minutes each at the counter--I couldn't think. Michele kept trying to start a conversation, but I couldn't participate. I could grunt. I could blink. But that was it.

The Department of Public Services isn't where you get your license plate or registration. You get those at the Tag Agency. It isn't even where you get your driver's license--you get that at the Tag Agency, too. You have to go to the DPS to get your information in the system, get your picture taken and your fingerprints entered, so you can go to the Tag Agency and get your driver's license. And what do they do at the Tag Agency? They take your picture again and check your fingerprints against those you just entered at the DPS.

So after all that waiting, and the tiniest amount of actual processing, we went to the Tag Agency and got our new Oklahoma driver's licenses. That took about seven minutes. My picture reflects the brain-deaditude I suffered at the DPS. I tried to take a picture of my license picture so I could share it with you, but our camera won't go close enough to show it.