DMV

I don't want to jinx myself by telling this story, but I've had extraordinary luck in getting my drivers license in this state. I've been twice and both times could have been complete disasters. The first time I went I had an expired-by-four-months Oklahoma license I needed to replace that weekend because in the next few days I was leaving on a trip that required a rental car.* As I recall I showed up with proof of residency, but didn't have the right kind, or enough of the right kind. A guy was helping me and he kept asking what kind of documents I had with me. Eventually we determined my checkbook with a local address on it was proof enough. Him: "Is this your current address?" Me: pause, pause "Yes." It wasn't. It was the first address I had in town, but I needed to speed up the process. After the eye test, computer test, and a lot of waiting I had my first Illinois license. 

Fast forward to last weekend when I showed up at the DMV with multiple options for address verification and an two-week expired license. After a quick wait in line I stepped to the Gate Keeper and we soon determined that I only had one valid proof of address, which happened to be the vehicle registration I also needed to get that day. I was getting ready to walk away when the Keeper offered the possibility that if I could show her my address associated with my online bank I could pass. Kindly, she also offered to hold my number while I stepped out of line to frantically log on to my banking site. And then things started to crumble. My phone was slow, I couldn't correctly answer my security questions, and on and on while I stood by the line for ten minutes. Finally, I logged into my credit card site and showed her. But the text was so small she couldn't really read it and she let me pass on a technicality with some frustration. Later I remembered that credit card addresses are no longer valid addresses according to the DMV, so the Keeper was extraordinarily kind to let me through. And lucky for me she held my number because by the time we got through sorting the address thing out they'd passed out about twenty more numbers. In the end I only waited about thirty minutes, which was pretty short, to get my second Illinois license by dubious means.** 

*I still haven't learned any lessons on my lack of planning and how to avoid potential disasters...

**I could have gone back, the only real need to get the renewal was that my license had already expired. But two weeks doesn't seem like much compared with an out of state four months.