Got my Texas driver’s license this morning — 13 months after I moved to Dallas and mere days before my Ohio license expires. (That license would be the one that had my eye color listed as “unknown,” like I’m some sort of shapeshifter or something.)
Anyway, I went through what’s become a regular ritual: fudging on the vision test. I have great, borderline supernatural vision when both my eyes are open. But my left eye on its own is farsighted. Luckily, driving with both eyes open is legal in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and as long as I’m not suddenly blinded in my right eye by a passing motorist, I’m fine. So everytime I get a vision test, there’s this moment of tension when I wait to see if the DMV employee is willing to give me, say, 30 attempts to read Line 5. “Let’s see…it says 534271. No, 846202. Actually, it must be 832027. Maybe 934605?”
Thankfully, my DMV patron was very cool. When I started Attempt #7 with an 8, she quickly said, “Yes! 8 is the first number!” And the best news of all: my new Texas license is good until 2007, by which point I’ll probably just break down and get glasses, anyway. Unfortunately, that also means I’ll have this shaggy half-ass hairdo and pathetic facial hair on my official record for six years.