DMV photos

My driver's license expires on November 12th (which is my birthday, so if you want to mail me a card or send me flowers, you have plenty of time to ask for my address). This meant a trip to the DMV. I would be getting a new photo taken, which I was excited about, on account of how I've been toting around an ID picture of me with triangle hair and a pink face for the past nine years.

My skin was flushed the day I got my driver's license because I did my test in July, and I did not put on the AC because I was really paranoid that I wouldn't be able to hear the instructor's directions well enough, even though I have really good hearing. So instead, the two of us sat roasting inside my car while I did things like parallel park and obey yield signs. If my sweat had dripped down from a smelly cloud, I might have created enough water to cause the car to hydroplane. So when it was time for me to get my photo snapped, you can imagine that I was as pink in the face as a grapefruit.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what I should look like in my new photo--you know, the one where I was no longer a minor. I contemplated wearing my new blond wig, because that way if I ever needed to be disguised, I would fully have a valid driver's license with a picture of a different looking person that was still essentially me, and I would have my passport which still features a photo of my 17 year old self with brown hair.

If the DMV employee were to ask me to take off the wig because it looked a bit fake, I had my reply ready. I would whisper, "I can't...I'm bald. I have cancer." And then they would let me leave it on. I also thought about wearing my credibility glasses, but they make you take your glasses off for your DMV picture anyway, so it would have been pointless. Instead what I did was draw a mole on my left cheek like Sydney Bristow did in the pilot episode of Alias.

My hair is now four times longer than it was in my high school days, and I wondered if I should wear it down, put it up, or wear pigtails. In the end I decided to wear it down, because in case I ever cut my hair really short again, I would have a memory of what it was like long. It's the same sort of concept as keeping a pair of size 0 jeans from your freshman year, because you are reminded that you were once that person. American women really like to dwell on who they were in the past, especially if that person was better looking than they are now.

I wore my favorite v-neck teal t-shirt, took time to apply all aspects of make-up (I left off the lip liner and fake eyelashes because this wasn't a drag show), and practiced my smile in the mirror like I was an 8th grader getting ready for school pictures.

I shouldn't have bothered.

I ended up having to add four pounds to my weight and zero inches to my height, pledge donation of my body organs to strangers, take a typical DMV photo, and   pay forty dollars to do it all. They really zoom in on your face nowadays, so none of my t-shirt made it into the shot. And my eyes are sort of crossed like I look really confused, which I guess will be okay if I am drunk and am trying to convince a bouncer at a bar that it really is me in the photo, even though I don't have that mole on my left cheek.

There is nothing glamorous about the DMV, and it's fact that the employees get paid more to take unflattering photos. I am pretty sure that even Julia Roberts has a bad photo on her driver's license. I am trying to console myself with being thankful for the photo I currently have, because the next time my license is about to expire, I'll probably have wrinkles and face chub. So this is about as flattering as it gets.

This is an exclusive shot of Justin Bieber getting his driver's license at the DMV. I bet he contemplated that purple shirt and striped sweater for hours.