I had a rather
tame adventure this afternoon involving the
ghetto side of existence and several other annoying factors.
It all started around two this afternoon, when my father called from work to say my brother needed a ride to the Secretary of State’s office to get a new copy of his drivers permit in order to turn it in to Century so that he would be eligible to take his road test tomorrow. My mom had gone into the Secretary of State’s office earlier, and had been denied the right to obtain another copy of the permit in my brother’s stead.
I reluctantly agreed to take Adam where he needed to go, not wanting to be held responsible for losing the forty dollar deposit made on the driving test already. Drove home from Aaron’s (where I had received the call) after calling Adam to make sure he was ready to go. Upon arrival, I ran inside and yelled for him to hurry up. No one answered. I searched the house top to bottom, and finally found him outside having a cigarette. I threatened not to take him, since he had sworn to me that he quit after new years. But he somehow convinced me to drive him the 25 minutes it took to get to the Secretary of State despite his blatant lies.
The traffic was horrible already, being a Friday and all. As we were driving down Ottawa Beach, Adam informed me that we had to stop by dad’s work to pick up his old copy of the permit. Luckily it was on the way. I pulled in next to the guard house and told Adam to run in and see if he could get a hold of dad. He made me drive three feet onto the sidewalk so he wouldn’t have to step in a shallow puddle standing outside his door. The permit was eventually found, and we were once again on our way.
It took longer than I expected to get there. No big deal. I found a parking spot and walked inside with Adam. The line was horrendous, mostly consisting of the lower class work force and such. I begged Adam to let me go and have him call when he needed a ride home, but he said he needed company. So we waited, and waited, and waited in line.
After about half an hour, Adam got sick and tired of waiting. He decided to loudly announce that if people could learn not to drink and drive, the line would be much more manageable to the more responsible part of society. Several people looked embarrassed, some were surprised, and the rest were angry.
We eventually got to the front of the line after some more waiting, where we discovered the computers were down. The lady behind the counter said no problem, they could still get another copy of Adam’s permit. She asked to see his id. He showed her his decrepit school id, the one that broke in half a week after he got it. She didn’t accept it. He showed her his debit card, but she wanted to see a passport, birth certificate, or a checkbook of all things. Adam didn’t have any of these things on him.
I was sent home to retrieve one of the needed items of identification while Adam was given a number to wait in a different line and see if he could get away with only having half a school id. Took about an hour, round trip, including the time it took me to search for his passport in the monstrous filing cabinets full of legal documents sitting in the computer room. I went as fast as possible, since the place closed at five and it was past 4:30 by this time. The traffic had grown worse, of course, and I was in an extremely pissy mood from being so stressed.
Thankfully, I arrived back at the Secretary of State, and saw my brother standing in the parking lot. With my dad. Turns out Adam didn’t need an id after all, and my dad had gotten off work early so he thought he’d stop by and make sure everything was going okay. Three hours of my day, gone. Sigh.