PTSD at the DMV

Disclaimer: You may have to forgive the quality of my posts for the next few days, since I'll be at the Very Important Grown-Up Big People Conference. It's going to be difficult to maintain the extremely high level of quality that I've established here, but I'll at least keep posting, by God.

Last week I had to go to the DMV to get a new license, in order to replace the one that was stolen last month. As anyone familiar with Dane Cook's early work knows, everyone sitting and waiting in the DMV is thinking the same thing: AAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHH!!! (Since we're all tired of seeing Dane Cook's face at this point, I'll move along quickly.) Actually, I was in a pretty good mood for someone who had to sit in a cramped waiting room for an hour, only to have to fork over $10 to replace something that was RIPPED FROM MY POSSESSION IN COLD BLOOD. I think this is because I had dedicated myself to a zen attitude about the whole thing before I even stepped in the building. I would have pulled it off, too, if it hadn't been for the damn DMV propaganda video that was playing on a loop in the waiting room.

Prominently placed in the middle of the tiny, crowded waiting room was a TV with a built-in VCR. Over and over and over it played a video about how important it was to pay attention and abide by the rules of the road while driving in a Work Zone. It was mostly annoying, in an extremely chipper sort of way, until it reached a certain point in the middle and suddenly turned all Lifetime Movie. Imagine, if you will...

A young girl, in her early 20s, is driving down the highway in an extremely irresponsible fashion. Irresponsible as in, talking on her cell phone, applying make up, and fiddling with the radio stations. Irresponsible as in, the only irresponsible things they didn't show her doing were waxing her eyebrows, bonging a beer, and/or snorting coke off the steering wheel column. And I think they probably would have gone with those things too, just to get the point across, but they didn't want to give anybody any good ideas. While she's doing all this, we are treated with a meaningful close-up of a sign warning that there is a Work Zone ahead.

Suddenly she looks up surprised, and says, "Oh no!" First, we see her car strike an orange barrel (rather slowly), and then HER CAR HITS A ROAD WORKER. I cannot stress this enough. Her CAR hits a PERSON. I know that we see violence on television all the time, but I did not expect to be confronted with this in the freaking DMV. I may have gasped the first time I saw it. Oh, but it doesn't stop there. Suddenly, everything is in black and white, and we see the worker hit the ground and a puddle of blood seeps out from under his head. The camera zooms in, weirdly, on the worker's eye. His dead, sightless eye.

Cut to Irresponsible Moron, who is freaking the hell out. A state trooper comes up and calmly explains the situation to her, while she hysterically cries. She claws at her face, she asks to call her mother, she asks what will happen to her, is the man dead?? Then we get to see a montage of pictures of the girl, in her prom dress, in her cap and gown, in her tennis uniform. Can't you see how her life has been changed by this terrible turn of events?!?

Suddenly, you're looking at a mother and her 2 children playing in their front yard. The mother is gardening, the children are tossing a football back and forth (in a really awkward, under-hand way, I might add). If you're like me, this will be the point at which you realize that your jaw has been hanging open ever since that poor guy's head blood spread across the pavement two paragraphs ago, and you think, "Ah, thank God that is over, now I can relax." You are so wrong. The voiceover tells us that this family loves to play outdoors, which is one reason their Head of Household chose his current job - as aROAD WORKER. Oh shit. Suddenly, 2 state troopers show up to tell this poor family that their husband and father was involved in an accident and he DIED. There is much weeping and gnashing of teeth. I think I teared up a little, crammed where I was on one of those little bucket seats between a large black man and an elderly white woman.

I think it's safe to say that none of us is expecting to go through an emotional roller coaster like this when we go into the DMV. It is a scientific fact that any time spent at the DMV is time taken off the end of your life. But we have no idea what additional damage is done by having to watch 5 minutes of pure melodramatic hell while sitting in the DMV.

But that's not all, people. Because I was sitting in that room for at least 45 minutes, with nothing to look at but that damn TV, I watched this video at least SIX TIMES before my brain just completely disengaged. So thanks a lot, North Carolina Department of Transportation. If your goal was to make me more aware of the dangers we all face when driving in Work Zones, then consider that mission accomplished. I know that the next time I drive through a Work Zone I will be more vigilant than ever before. And I'm sure that, with time, the sweating and trembling will subside.