I haven’t driven a car in about ten years, I think, but I still need to renew my driver’s license, as it serves as a general purpose ID, plus one never knows when I might have to get behind the wheel again.

Well, the renewal notice came and I sent it in along with the fee, and they returned the card that requires me to go to a DMV center to get my photo taken, and it’s just been sitting there for months. My license has long since expired and the renewal just sits there and I stare at it and I know that it won’t get the photo taken by itself.

So over the weekend I decided I had procrastinated long enough. I would go first thing on Monday morning. Might as well go early and beat the crowd, right?

I figured I remembered where the nearest DMV location was, but it didn’t hurt to check, so I went to their web site, and sure enough, there it was at 8th and Arch. I might have been a block or so off, but I would have found it.

So Monday morning I started to go, and then another thought occurred to me. They do open by 9:00 AM don’t they? That would be 8:00 my time as I’m still on Standard Time, as I abhor Daylight Saving Time. So I went back to the web site to check the hours, and thank goodness I did. They open every day at 8:30 but they’re closed on Sunday and Monday. As it’s a half hour walk to the place, I’d have been royally pissed if I had gotten there and the place was closed. Dodged that bullet.

So Tuesday morning I set out once again. Except—

I forgot something upstairs, and as I was coming back down the steps, the smoke detector in the stairway went off. I mean it actually sounded an alarm. It wasn’t just doing the chirpy thing to indicate the stupid battery was low, the goddamned alarm really went off.

Where was the smoke? I hadn’t been cooking anything that morning yet. I pressed the button to stop the alarm and removed the foul thing from its holder and stuck it under a pillow to try to smother it to death.

Meanwhile, I had to wonder, did it know something I didn’t know? Was there some slow burning fire that my dulled sense of smell just didn’t notice?

Now I was leery about leaving the house.

They say that smoke detectors save lives. Well, you couldn’t prove that by me. In my experience smoke detectors ruin sleep when the battery goes low (always at 3:00 AM) and they give off that maddening chirping sound. They contribute to wasted time when their alarms go off when you’re cooking and you have to take time to silence the alarm and move the detector temporarily out of the way of the cooking area.

Save lives? Huh! They just make me grumpy.

Does anybody reading this know of a case from their personal experience where a smoke detector actually saved lives? I’d like to hear about it. I’m sure they do, but I’ve never heard of a case in my experience.

I decided I knew more than the detector did, so I went on my way, and in about a half hour I arrived at the DMV and saw this:

 

The line stretched around the corner just to get into the DMV, and when I asked I was told there was a pretty long line once one got inside. I decided I didn’t want to wait for what looked like at least a hour or more. I hadn’t had breakfast yet. So I returned home.

I asked my neighbor who said the problem is Real ID. The 8th and Arch location is one of the few places that offers it. She said she goes to the Oregon Avenue location.

I knew I hated Real ID. I spent the rest of the day grumpier than usual.

And cursing whoever came up with the idea of Real ID. May they come down with a terminal case of genital warts. Unto the fourth generation!