I needed my license for something the other day and pulled it out, and somebody next to me laughed. I forget sometimes the picture I had taken for my license.
It was September 22nd of 2011. David was in some rough shape. We had a meeting with the lawyers earlier that day, and David had already been in the hospital once at this point.
My license was going to expire on my birthday 6 days later, so he agreed to give me a lift to the DMV to have it renewed.
Smiles and laughs were hard to come by these days. Everything was doom and gloom. His posture sluggish. It was frustrating that the life of the party, Mr. Jovial, was in such bad shape.
My name was called, and he said he would wait outside since it was warm out while I had my picture taken.
All the while in my head, I am thinking of things to say or do to make him laugh, to snap him out of the funk if only for a second. I had the option of just using the same picture, and I asked the lady if I could retake it.
As I stood in front my the blue background, I just was mulling over anything I could do to get him to relax. “Say cheese,” the lady said, and at that moment, I knew what it was going to be. I smiled the biggest shit-eating grin I could put on my face. Who would make a silly face for their drivers license?
The lady looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Are you sure… you want this picture?”
“Yep!” I replied. So I waited for them to print it. When the other lady handed it to me, she laughed, “Oh Lord, would you look at that?” she exclaimed as she handed it to me. This was it.
I walked outside, and there was DP moping on the curb, just looking genuinely uncomfortable. “You ready to go?” he asked. “Yep, let’s go.” He pauses for a moment. “So you going to show me?”
That’s the best thing about licenses: You get your first one, and it’s one of those things that everybody wants to see, needs to see, because the pictures are supposed to be bad.
He looks down and realizes they changed the design for CT, and then all of a sudden I see the dimples, a little smile. Then he just hands it back to me with his trademark hiccup-type giggle laugh and says, “Dude, you are crazy,” and the smile continued all the way to the car and a few miles more.
It worked, if only for a moment. I got him to step outside himself, and he was there for that fleeting moment.
I forget about the photo because for me, that’s… well, me. Life is serious but not so serious that we can’t have a giant grin on our license. I also think about that day when I do recall, and it’s just one more of those “last things” I did with my brother. Something as mundane as getting my license renewed at the DMV has become this milestone in my life.
When people laugh at my license, I warm up a bit thinking that it not only helped David that day, but maybe it helps the person on the receiving end of the license, as well. And maybe, just maybe, their day got a little better thanks to me.
