Tuesday, May 01, 2007
The NJ DMV
My driver’s license was due for renewal in April. Now I don’t know about other states but in New Jersey this requires you to have several proofs of who you are. Different proofs are assigned different values and you need to have a total of 6 points. I looked over the little pamphlet, gathered together my 6 points and headed off to the D.M.V. last Thursday. (Yeah, you can try to change your name but you’ll always be the DMV!) Well, the one thing I missed was that if you’re married and had changed your name, you have to show your marriage license. Having my Social Security cards in both names wasn’t any good as they explained as I needed to show why the name changed. "Jeeze…..I don’t know where it even is!" So they say,” Well, where we you married? You can just go to the town clerk and get a copy.” “Fine, I’ll go do that now.”
So I head off to get a copy of my marriage license thinking this will be a slam dunk. NOT! They don’t have a record of it and said that back then (It’ll be 30 years this June) that the person that worked there did miss posting some in the book. Oh that’s just great I’m thinking to myself because that means I’d have to get it from the state which of course requires more time and money. I leave there and I get to thinking that perhaps it may have been filled in another town as the two towns have been hyphened together in the past. It’s worth a shot. Crap. They don’t have a record of it either.
Over the weekend I convince Paul that I’m sure it’s in this extra wedding album in a box in the garage. Now anyone that knows our garage knows it no mean feat to get to anything in there. I’m in my room downstairs working on my computer and I hear Paul yelling my name. I realize he’s in the garage, fearing the worst, I go running figuring he’s been buried in a collapse of boxes around him! No, he’s OK and finds what I was thinking of. It’s amazing he can probably find just about anything in there you want. Whew, it’s not the official issued license but a little booklet the church would give you with a place in the back where it’s all recorded, dated and signed.
Monday rolls around and I figure I’ll give it a try even though it’s not the “official” one. Desk #1 clears part of my paper work and I get in line for Desk #2. The woman looks at what I present as my marriage license and I explain to her how I had gone to 2 towns and they didn’t have it recorded! “Well, that’s because you were married in _________”, she says. I look at it and it names another town, which really isn’t the town of the place where we were married. Oh,cripes I’m thinking. Pleeze just take it! “Please”, I say, “Can you just accept this?” She wasn’t crazy about my birth certificate either because she said it didn’t have a certain seal. “But look, it has the raised imprint.” “It’s not 'the seal'.” I had even brought another kind of copy and I told her, “I have a third at home.” Am I ever going to get out of here with my license? “I’ll have to check with the supervisor.” She’s gone for several minutes and I say a silent prayer. Yeah, I admit it. I prayed to get out of the DMV with my new digital hologram driver’s license. She returns and tells me that they’ll accept it this time but I’d better get a real copy of my marriage license. After the woman at the next desk graciously agrees to retake my first picture, Victory is mine, and I AM OUT OF THE DMV – HOME FREE!
. . . But the story does not end here. Next I go off to the town that is written on the form of the marriage record in the little booklet. They don’t have it either! But since the Township surrounds the Boro with the same name she calls over to their office. YES! They have it there. So. . . I head over to there. I fill out the form, she's about to hand me my copy, and just as I’m about to give her my ten dollars, we discuss about this getting reregistered in the correct town. She says she’ll take care of it, keep the money, and then pick up a copy there, when it’s all straightened out. I jokingly say, “Gee, if years from now ancestors’ were trying to find a copy of this record they’d never found it!"
Copyright © 2007 Deborah Sharp Loeb
So I head off to get a copy of my marriage license thinking this will be a slam dunk. NOT! They don’t have a record of it and said that back then (It’ll be 30 years this June) that the person that worked there did miss posting some in the book. Oh that’s just great I’m thinking to myself because that means I’d have to get it from the state which of course requires more time and money. I leave there and I get to thinking that perhaps it may have been filled in another town as the two towns have been hyphened together in the past. It’s worth a shot. Crap. They don’t have a record of it either.
Over the weekend I convince Paul that I’m sure it’s in this extra wedding album in a box in the garage. Now anyone that knows our garage knows it no mean feat to get to anything in there. I’m in my room downstairs working on my computer and I hear Paul yelling my name. I realize he’s in the garage, fearing the worst, I go running figuring he’s been buried in a collapse of boxes around him! No, he’s OK and finds what I was thinking of. It’s amazing he can probably find just about anything in there you want. Whew, it’s not the official issued license but a little booklet the church would give you with a place in the back where it’s all recorded, dated and signed.
Monday rolls around and I figure I’ll give it a try even though it’s not the “official” one. Desk #1 clears part of my paper work and I get in line for Desk #2. The woman looks at what I present as my marriage license and I explain to her how I had gone to 2 towns and they didn’t have it recorded! “Well, that’s because you were married in _________”, she says. I look at it and it names another town, which really isn’t the town of the place where we were married. Oh,cripes I’m thinking. Pleeze just take it! “Please”, I say, “Can you just accept this?” She wasn’t crazy about my birth certificate either because she said it didn’t have a certain seal. “But look, it has the raised imprint.” “It’s not 'the seal'.” I had even brought another kind of copy and I told her, “I have a third at home.” Am I ever going to get out of here with my license? “I’ll have to check with the supervisor.” She’s gone for several minutes and I say a silent prayer. Yeah, I admit it. I prayed to get out of the DMV with my new digital hologram driver’s license. She returns and tells me that they’ll accept it this time but I’d better get a real copy of my marriage license. After the woman at the next desk graciously agrees to retake my first picture, Victory is mine, and I AM OUT OF THE DMV – HOME FREE!
. . . But the story does not end here. Next I go off to the town that is written on the form of the marriage record in the little booklet. They don’t have it either! But since the Township surrounds the Boro with the same name she calls over to their office. YES! They have it there. So. . . I head over to there. I fill out the form, she's about to hand me my copy, and just as I’m about to give her my ten dollars, we discuss about this getting reregistered in the correct town. She says she’ll take care of it, keep the money, and then pick up a copy there, when it’s all straightened out. I jokingly say, “Gee, if years from now ancestors’ were trying to find a copy of this record they’d never found it!"
Copyright © 2007 Deborah Sharp Loeb
posted by DSL | 1:20 PM
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