Bureaucracy

What a day!

I spent the day down in Lincoln, getting my son his driver's license back.

It all started last summer, when he was working as a delivery man. He was caught speeding. In a Construction Zone, so the fine doubles. He was given the option of paying the $400 fine, or attending a special driver safety class. Being cheap, he opted for the class.

Unfortunately, In September, he got a letter from the City, telling him he had to pay the fine, or his license would be suspended. No problem, he thought. He called the office that sent the letter, and explained that he had taken the class, giving the date. The person he talked to said he would take care of it.

In December, he was driving home from the bowling center in his girlfriend's car. This car had been in an accident, and the front bumper had been replaced with a bumper that had no place to attach a license plate. So she had been driving around for over a year with the front plate on the dash, ion the front window. But that night, a cop decided it really should be on the bumper.

My son was his usual polite self talking to the officer. He said they would buy a plate-holder in the morning and affix the plate properly. Then the cop dropped the bombshell. "Did you know your license was suspended?" The cop kept the license (of course), my son was in shock, and his girlfriend had to drive the rest of the way home. They bought a plate-holder the next morning, and fixed the plate, thus avoiding any fine for that. Then my son tried calling the city, but it was the holiday season, and of course, the person he needed to talk to was out until January. He finally was able to talk to that individual, who explained that his name wasn't on file as having taken the class, so he had to pay the fine before he could get his license back. Of course, the next day was his court date on the charge of driving on a suspended license.

He explained his situation to the judge, and asked for a little more time to get it all straightened out. The judge took pity on him, and gave him a full 60 days to take care of things. So two weeks later, my son paid the fine. They told him there that to get his license back, he would have to go to the state department of motor vehicles, and pay an additional $50 there to get his license back.

So today, two weeks later, I was able to get away from the office for a day, and I took him down to Lincoln. We found the state DMV office, and and went in. Fortunately, they have this step down to a science. The clerk took the paperwork from my son, ran it against his computer records, took our money, and a little while later came back with my son's drivers license.

He hadn't been behind the wheel of a car in nearly two months, and he was so thrilled to be able to drive again that he asked if he could drive home. So I got to kick back and watch the scenery for an hour this afternoon instead of fighting traffic myself.