A little comparison

I got my driver’s license renewed yesterday. I had accidentally let it expire, so I had to do some extra tricks to get it done. This involved waiting in line for 92 minutes (not that I was counting) with my 4 children.

Looking around the room at the kids getting their drivers permits and licenses, I couldn’t help but compare this time to the first time.

Remember when you got your first license? The excitement, oh the excitement. The whole day was special. You picked out your biggest Forenza shirt and your most acid washed jeans weeks before the big event. You got up early and spent hours on your pink eye shadow and sprayed the sides of your hair into wings that were as hard as plastic so you could rest easy that they would still be strong when the photo was snapped. It was glorious.

Fast forward 20ish years.

The task was squeezed into the busy day of kid stuff. I was not at all pleasantly surprised when we walked in the door and saw a line that looked like the cinnamon roll stand at the state fair. Except without cinnamon rolls.

I took a number. That is never a good sign.

It wasn’t long before Cole knocked over a big metal sign that crashed to the ground in the otherwise quiet room. It went virtually unnoticed, I’m sure. I spent the rest of the hour and a half and two minutes playing rock-paper-scissors, thumb wrestling small fingers, and trying to make Garrett understand that although I appreciate his entrepreneurial spirit, he could not sell our number to the defeated looking souls who were walking in and discovering the long line.

And unlike the first time, when it was finally time for my photo I panicked for a second and wondered if I even had make-up on. I did. Calm down.

The times are different, yes they are. Wow, are they different.

I like different.