My idiot license is certainly up to date

This year I received my car tags a whole week before the deadline. This won’t mean much to you, though, if you don’t know about my dysfunctional relationship with County Clerk Elaine Anderson.
In the 17 years I’ve lived here, I’ve hardly ever completed the car tag renewal process correctly. Almost every time I send in the forms for my new stickers, I forget some piece of the puzzle and have to start over.
Perhaps examining my method will uncover its flaw. The form arrives in the mail, and I immediately put it in a “safe spot” on the fridge between the fall baseball sign-up sheets and the McAllister’s Deli coupons.
The form hangs on the fridge until my husband comes home one day and says, “The stickers on your license plate expire at the end of September.”
Ha! Those who know my husband can stop laughing, since you know he would never notice a detail like that. It was really my dad who said it.
I then decide the best way to start the week would be to get that required car inspection crossed off the list. One problem: Back then, the inspection station was closed Mondays, which I didn’t clue into until I drove up and naively thought I was the first person in line.
That’s one of my more common tag renewal blunders. Over the years, I’ve goofed up this process so many ways that the county clerk probably thinks she’s getting punked every time my name comes across the system.
Before the county required vehicles to pass emissions testing, I would invariably write my check for the wrong amount. I didn’t mean to, but bad math is one of my special gifts. Two days later, I’d get a hand-addressed envelope from the county clerk’s office with my check and a polite note congratulating me on my special gift.
Once the county added a visit to the emissions testing center on peculiarly named Merylinger Court to the process, my mishaps multiplied exponentially. I once waited in a 30-minute line at the inspection station only to have the attendant point out that I’d driven there in our minivan while the renewal form was for our other car.
I’ve had a potty-training twin start doing the pee dance in the middle of that inspection line. All hail the spare Pull-Up I found under the console.
In an earnest attempt to do it right, one year I opened the reminder envelope, filled out the renewal form, checked the math on my check and promptly mailed it in. Of course, in my organized blur, I completely omitted the inspection step.
Say what you will about government inefficiency. I deserve the blame for any problems in this relationship.
Believe me, Mrs. Anderson. It’s not you. It’s me.
Copyright 2006