I just had another bloody birthday. It seems that no matter what I do, I can’t seem to stop getting older. And this particular birthday was especially troubling, since it was also the date that the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) assigned me to get my driver’s license renewed. In the past, I’ve been able to do all that online, but this time around I’m so old that they needed me to come in and take an eye test, which opened up a whole new can of worms that I will detail shortly.
First, a little personal DMV history. Almost two winters ago, with the help of a nameless friend with an extremely poor sense of direction, my poor little 21-year-old Toyota pickup truck found itself (with me at the wheel) up to our elbows on a flooded road off of Highway 99. I wasn’t the only motorist suddenly floating around in a sea of heavy rainfall, but I knew I had a serious problem when a young smiling boy who apparently lived in the area came leisurely swimming by me and my sputtering truck.
“Don’t turn back—just keep going,” he encouraged me, pointing straight ahead, and so I did, along with the little misguided caravan in front of me. Much to my relief, we all finally reached dry ground, although I soon discovered that there had been a casualty—my poor catalytic converter. Apparently, it had drowned in all that high water, confirmed by the fact that the little yellow light on my dashboard refused to go off.
So, a few days later, off to the motor repair shop I went, only to discover that replacing my catalytic converter and the air filter sensor that goes with it, would cost almost as much as my little ancient truck is worth. As you might imagine, I was in no particular hurry to do the repairs, and before I knew it, the DMV was telling me that I couldn’t re-register my vehicle until it could pass a smog test, which of course it couldn’t do with a stone-cold dead catalytic converter. Anyway, I have been driving around for months with the wrong-colored sticker on my license plate, so knowing that my driver’s license was due for a renewal soon, I finally got the repairs done so that I could turn my attention to my real DMV problem—somehow passing an eye test although I can barely see out of my left eye, the result of a long-ago ruptured blood vessel. As usual, my beloved daughter, who is quite clever when it comes to skullduggery, came to the rescue, volunteering to set everything up and come with me. She even uploaded my Social Security card, birth certificate and all the other information required to get me one of those Real ID cards while I was there.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” she assured me, “they’re so busy at those DMV places that I should be able to distract them while you use your good eye to pass the test. If not, when they tell you to cover up your good eye, just use Mr. Spock’s Vulcan “live long and prosper” hand-salute and peek through your spread-apart fingers.
All went well until the very nice lady behind the DMV counter informed me that the Spock thing had been attempted before and that I would have to try again. There were five separate eye charts behind her, and each of them had five lines, labeled A,B,C,D, and E, and there was no way I was going to be able to read any of them with my bad eye. I considered telling her that I had seen people driving all the time while wearing a black patch over one eye, and that there was also plenty of scientific evidence out there about the fact that the brain compensates for a bad eye by letting the good eye take over most of the chores, and that I also have a perfect driving record. But there was well over a hundred people in the crowded room waiting their turn and it didn’t seem like the appropriate time to brag about not being in an accident for 50 years, much less start up a lengthy discussion about eye health. Then my daughter came to the rescue, yet again.
The nice counter lady could see that I was having a hard time not only reading the charts, but also following her directions about which chart and which line to read, so my daughter leaned over with pitiful eyes and said to the lady, “I’m afraid my father can’t hear very well. His right ear is basically toast because he was always shooting his rifle off in Vietnam. He’s a disabled veteran.”
Well, maybe the nice lady at the counter had a relative in the armed forces or was just a really good patriot, but she directed me to read just one more line and then passed me. And as we walked out of the DMV, my happy daughter asked why I didn’t seem as pleased as she was that I had successfully renewed my driver’s license for another five years.
“I’m just thinking that it’s kind of sad when you reach an age when you can only see with one eye and hear with one ear, not to mention all the other medical stuff that is lined up to kill me. Boy, Bette Davis was definitely right when she said that, “Getting’ old ain’t for sissies’!”