Devil at the DMV

Sirens should have been buzzing, cannons should have been firing when I decided to go to the New York Department of Motor Vehicles on that fateful day. I had just test-driven a good-condition, used Integra the day before and had agreed with the owner to meet and exchange cash and title on the following day.

On which day, Evvy? Oh, I'm not extremely superstitious, by any means (despite the fact I have this slight aversion to washing my hair on New Year's Day), so I thought nothing of going out to a hellish state government office on:

Yeah, you read correctly. And after that day, I became a true a believer ...

I filled out all the necessary forms in advance of going to the office, hoping to shave an extra two minutes of wait time. My fastidious nature led me to carefully place each form in a manilla envelope and head out to the office a half hour prior to the appointed meeting time. I called the car owner and everything was set. This was going to be so smooth, I thought.

I ate those words, swallowing them whole, when I was handed my ticket to enter the infernal waiting room.

I looked my ticket over, poring over every damning detail. I suppressed a shiver from racing down my tingling spine. Goosebumps covered my flesh and my mouth had a pasty taste to it. I laughed nervously to myself and hid the ticket in my pocket. Perhaps the gods hadn't yet seen what I had seen. Maybe I could fool them. I put on a happy face and sat on a bench blackened by cigarette burns, and proceeded to wait.

And wait.

AND WAIT.

AND WAIT!!!

No car guy in sight. No one answered his phone. He didn't call to tell me he'd be late. I was furious. My number was called. My number was passed. I continued to sit on the bench, completely at a loss for my next course of action. Nearby mothers shielded their children from my gaze, for fear that I would explode in a bomb of four-letter words and banshee shrieks. I felt my head getting hotter and hotter by the second. I heard someone laugh behind me. I whipped myself around and glared at the perpetrator, hoping lazer beams of death might shoot out from my eyes and silence the hyena. (Anyway ... why would anyone enjoy his time at the DMV?)

Eventually, I gave up. I submitted to the devils of the DMV. A mere three hours after arriving cheery-faced and hopeful, I trudged out of the DMV, a broken woman and with nothing to claim but a crunched up ticket and unnaturally raised blood pressure. I resentfully returned to work, grumbled about a few reports (well, grumbled more than usual), and barked at my innocent intern.

I received a call from the car owner's mother later that evening, only to be informed that the car had been sold to someone else while I was waiting patiently and undeservedly at the DMV. I could have strangled the whole family. Thoughts of zipping over to their house and throwing DMV forms and ticket stubs into the trees and bushes of their little white house in Queens penetrated my unstable mind. I wanted to paste Hello Kitty stickers -- the kind that can never be removed entirely -- all over the shiny red car.

I ranted for a good four days after, driving practically everyone I knew insane, and building together a small band of "that's no fair!" guerillas ready to run to Queens to help me egg and silly string the entire place. My anger eventually subsided and instead morphed into a religious-like fervor to find another car to obsess over. In the end, I found myself a very plain Jane 4-door vehicle. I purchased it with no hassle and almost no stress (the burden of the stress was handed down to my dwindling bank account, of course).

Am I finally happy? Sure, I guess. The DMV devil still makes an appearance in my subconscious whenever I see another Integra on the road. Today, it only takes me a minute or two to snap out of bumper car mode and return to good ol' Earth.

Look into the face of anger and quiver.

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