While we were camping with my family a few weeks ago, Uncle David gave Emily her first driving lesson. Other than nearly driving into a ditch because she forgot to brake as she rounded a corner at 20 mph, Uncle David said she did great.
It was a bad decision to give her that thrilling taste of driving. She has bugged me DAILY ever since and today we finally went to get her driver's permit. SIX HOURS LATER, she passed the test the first try. What a day!
Before we could begin, Emily's dad and I had to get our signatures notarized. Apparently, divorced parents have to do such a thing. Luckily, we both still bank at the same credit union, so the process took (literally!) about 2 minutes.
Near that credit union is a DMV office. Logic would tell you that would be a good place for Emily to take her test. Logic would be wrong. We stood in line for nearly 20 minutes, only to be told that their computers were down. Since the driver's test is computerized, we were out of luck.
We drove 10 miles to another DMV location. They hand out numbers to all customers. The line TO GET A NUMBER stretched out the door and halfway to the parking lot! I left the girls in line and went in to ask if their computers were working for driver's tests. I was told yes; however, we stood in line ten minutes and never moved. We left.
The book Emily used to study listed several other offices, but none are close. We decided to drive 15 miles to a third location, hoping for a shorter line. The line was shorter, but after standing in line for another 20 minutes we were informed that they needed additional information, something the first office could have told us but didn't. We had to drive home to get the missing information and then drive back. Luckily, they allowed us to cut to the front of the line upon our return. Even so, it still took us an additional 90 minutes for Emily to take the test (15 minutes) and then to get her picture taken and get the actual license.
Toward the end, a DMV worker explained the chaos to me. Sunday night, there was a huge storm here in town. The storm knocked out the state's main server, causing every office in the state to be closed on Monday, which just happened to be the first day of the month....their busiest day of the month! So today, Tuesday, was twice as busy because everyone who couldn't take care of business yesterday had to try again today. That explains why one office still had downed computers, too.
I am SO glad Emily passed the test the first time! She gets double brownie points for that.
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