My second day back in the United States, after finally reviving the dead batteries in my cars and enjoying a sumptuous Korean dinner with my daughter and her husband, I had a great night’s sleep. I slept late the second day, a Saturday, and during a late breakfast of pancakes, bacon, hash browns, and coffee, I discovered that my driver’s license had expired two months ago. Fortunately, I hadn’t been stopped the previous day, and I was having breakfast at a restaurant located only a few miles from the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), which I remembered stayed open until on Saturday.
I got to the DMV at 11 am, an hour before closing, and
got in a line of nearly a hundred people, all waiting to get new or renewed
licenses, voter registration cards, or new tags for their cars. I got my new license, but at the same time, I
received an insight; standing in that line at DMV, I was reminded of what
America is and who we are, and surprisingly, I learned that bureaucracies
sometimes do work.
First, what is an American? Well, in line with me were people speaking
Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Malay, Thai, and Korean – oh yes, and English too,
in a variety of accents from the nasal mispronunciations of New York to the
slow drawl of the deep south. Old,
young, and all the years in between, we resembled a small United Nations, but
in fact, were just a representative sampling of this country; people of all
races, religions, and creeds who are in fact just American. A gentleman from
Peru stopped speaking Spanish with his wife long enough to commiserate with me
about having to stand in such a long line on a Saturday morning instead of
being at National Stadium watching a baseball game. The young Malaysian woman behind me agreed,
but said she’d rather be attending a concert at Kennedy Center. A middle-aged woman farther along in the
line, in a distinctly German accent, said she was going to be late for her
community picnic and yard sale, and her husband would be upset at having to
tend their sales booth all by himself.
We all came from different places, but on this day, standing in this
line; we were all one – Americans dealing with the bureaucracy.
We all learned something standing in that line,
too. When the clock struck twelve, we
were sure we’d be told to come back later, and were surprised when a voice came
over the PA system informing us that everyone in line would be served. The doors to the DMV were closed, and over
the next hour, the staff did just that; with smiles and efficiency, they worked
their way through more than a hundred people until everyone was taken care
of. Just when you thought the
bureaucracy was a faceless monolith that didn’t care about the individuals it
is supposed to serve, it surprises you and puts on a human face.
