There are few things in life that I dread more than making a visit to the Dept. of Motor Vehicles.  Falling on my face in the middle of New York City, sitting in church behind my bikini waxing girl waxist waxer, and destroying loads of laundry with ink pens all sound more appealing than having to go to the bleeping DMV. 

I’ve known for quite some time that I was going to have to endure the pain that IS the DMV, because there was some confusion with the title on my car and I had to get it sorted out.  I blame Nissan for the entire thing, but whatever. 

I finally decided that yesterday was the day.  It was ridiculously cold outside, so I figured I might as well get it over with before the weather gets nice. 

I put on a happy face and went in with a glass-half-full-kind-of-attitude. And a 21-month-old. 

I pulled my number from the little electronic thingymajig and then sat down to begin my wait. 

To my surprise, my number was called pretty quickly.  Of course, “pretty quickly” is all relative, but for the DMV, it wasn’t bad.  I immediately started thinking of all the other things I would be able to do with my afternoon, now that I wasn’t going to be spending hours upon hours with my DMV friends. 

As Arle and I walked up to the counter, I gladly handed over all my paperwork.  The lady behind the counter promptly told me I had to show my proof of insurance, even though the “Needed for Title” sign said nothing about having to show my insurance card.  She told me to just hang on to my number and come back to her when I came back in. 

Off we went, back into the frigid wind to snag my insurance card. 

Once back in the building, we went back to DMV Friend #1′s cubicle.  She was helping somebody else at this point.  I waited.  Once she finished, I stepped up to her counter and handed over my paperwork again.  She asked me what my place number was. 

“A227,” I told her.  She said, “OK, I’ll put it back in the system.  Have a seat.” 

Huh? 

Oh, that’s right.  I’m at the DMV.  Waiting is part of the game.  Part of the torture.  Part of their evil plot to destroy the world.  I’m pretty sure the DMV is somehow behind all things bad. 

Arle and I sat.  And waited

Finally A227 was called again.  We walked over to a new cubicle and a new lady.  I handed over all my paperwork and she began rifling through the bundle.  She informed me that the “good news” is that we would be receiving a refund, but in order to do that I would have to bring her my old license plate and get a new one.  She also said it would be best to do that today, because the refund amount would decrease with each day that I didn’t do it. 

I’m sure I sounded like a moron, but went ahead and asked how I would go about removing my plate.  It’s something I’ve never done before, so I didn’t know what kind of manual labor would be involved.  Was it something I needed Trav to do? 

She said you just have to unscrew it. 

Oh, OK.  That would all be fine and dandy if I carried a screwdriver in my purse, but I don’t. 

She told me I could go over to station 9 and borrow one.  I went to station 9 and was given a phillips screwdriver, a flat-head screwdriver, and a pair of pliers.  Why don’t you just give me a miter saw, a weedeater, and an axe while you’re at it? 

Off we went, out into the freezing wind to unscrew my stupid license plate. 

Back in we went to present my license plate as a peace offering. 

Of course, my lady was helping somebody else at this point, so we waited.  And waited. 

Eventually our turn came and I gave the lady my plate. 

She vigorously typed all sorts of stuff into her evil computer and then said, “OK, you’ll owe thirteen fifty three.” 

Me:  I thought I was getting a refund.

Her: You will get one for your plate, but first you’ll have to have this paperwork filled out by Nissan, then we’ll send your refund to you.

Me:  Alright.  So, I owe $13.53 today?

Her (as she turns her monitor toward me):  No, that’s $1,353.00

Me (in my head):  Holy #%*@

Me (out loud):  How on earth do I owe that? 

Her:  Well, you never paid the sales tax on the car. 

Me:  What???!!!  How???

She proceeded to explain the entire thing about how the DMV is out to destroy the world and take all of our money and be the stinkiest place EVER and make us wait for hours on end to give them money and completely ruin people’s days.

I finally decided that I had no choice but to cough up the cash.  At this point, I just wanted to get out of there, so I whipped out my Amex and handed it to her.  At least I’ll get 1353 Amex points out of the deal.

She responded with, “We’ll have to add on a 2.9% additional charge in order to run a card.” 

At this point, I was so very thankful to have Arle at my side.  Had I not, I’m pretty sure I would have leaped across the counter and gone nutso on this lady.  I’m not one to use “bad words,” but I assure you that every four letter word I could think of was flying through my head and begging to leave my lips. 

I was already having to give them $1353 and there was NO way on earth I was going to give them another $40, even if it did mean missing out on my points. 

She informed me that there was an ATM across the street if I wanted to go get cash, but I would need to be back in 10 minutes because they would be closing soon. 

I swooped Arle up and made a mad dash to my car.  There’s NO way I was coming back to this blasted place two days in a row. 

We jumped in the car and raced over to the ATM.  I swiped my debit card and punched in the amount I needed.  It quickly told me that it was unable to dispense more than $600 to a person each day.  I got my $600, and raced off to the next bank I could find.  This ATM was kind to me and gave me $760. 

We raced back to the dungeon of death and, just as we slid up to the counter, the gates began to close and lock.  Holy cow, I would have gone crazy on somebody if I had been locked out after all of that. 

Of course, I still had to wait because my DMV girl was helping some other guy. 

FINALLY, we made it back up to the counter and the girl took my stack of $20 bills.  I called her a bad name (in my head) and then asked how much my “good news” refund would be.  I’ll admit that for a brief moment I forgot where I was and expected her to say something like, “Oh, you’ll be receiving this entire stack of cash back in the mail within just a few days.” 

But then I snapped out of it and heard her say, “$70!!!”  She acted like I had hit the lottery or something. 

She finally finished up her never ending explanation of the never ending list of things I would need to do in order to get the whopping $70 back in my possession.

I turned around and left.  I felt robbed.  Beat down.  Furious. 

Thankfully, I came home to Gilles and Cheryl’s mad-crazy dance routine on Dancing With The Stars.  It (and a yummy glass of wine) somehow eased the pain of my expensive DMV visit.