They found his still-beating heart in the ash

[sovay]

In the same way that people are said to perceive the face of the Virgin Mary in the burnt parts of grilled cheese, I just reached for a small cheap paper cup with a pattern of iris flowers and saw a death's head.

This is not really surprising. I found out this afternoon that the driver's license I renewed online in September was sent to my old street address in New Haven.

I do not even understand how this happened. I am told it's my fault, for not updating my information when I moved. I never had my Connecticut address on my license. I never had a Connecticut license. (I've never had more than one Massachusetts license, once I turned twenty-one and could change over to the adult kind—I've been carrying the same card with terribly out-of-date photo for the past nine years.) I didn't have an online account with the DMV until September—I set it up from scratch with my current information—and even when I lived in New Haven, I didn't use that particular address for anything financial. The woman on the other end of the phone explained to me that since I didn't realize the mistake within thirty days of renewal, the mix-up is my fault, I will have to pay the same fees to renew my license again, there may be some additional penalty for giving the DMV the runaround and in any case I will now have to re-take my road test because the thirty-day receipt for renewal expired back in October and I've been walking around with no valid license at all between then and now.

I really don't think this one's me. I remember entering my current street address. If nothing else, it's where they send the bills. I haven't lived in New Haven for almost exactly five years—if my old address had been anywhere on display when I opened the account online, there is no way I'd have let it stand. This was not credible to the woman on the other end of the phone. She would not even connect me to the department that could have told me whether the license has been returned by the current resident or whether some stranger in New Haven is walking around using my identity to get into bars. (They're a paperwork department, she said, and don't use phones. In this day and age, bullshit.) So I'm sure I should be calling the DMV back and demanding to speak to the next level of management, but I just feel depressed and violent. I don't have the money to throw away on re-renewal. I do not want to re-take my road test. I don't like being treated as an idiot on top of a liar. And I am tired. I am incredibly tired.

I mean, it's nice that This Happy Breed (1944) is finally going to be available on Region 1 DVD. But it's really not helping.

Comments

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

That is miserable. And not being the sort of person who relishes bureaucracy by way of volume (like my mother, who I have, in the past, referred obdurate functionaries for verbal abuse) either, I empathize with the choices you face.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

One time I moved, one of my credit cards didnt change the billing address, and for over 6 months I would send them the correct address with my payment. After resorting to sending them a dollar payment and stapling the check to the bill (and we talking a LOT of staples) they never did. Those checks cleared my account too. When the post office stopped forwarding my old mail, they still didnt get the new address off the returned bills. When they turned it over to collections, who by the way, sent their notice to the right address did it ever get straightened out.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I'm so very sorry. That's appalling and bizarre. I can't imagine why they'd have sent it to New Haven, but certain it's them and not you. I wish I knew anything useful to say.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I don't know what to say, except that the woman on the phone sounds like that power-abusing minion at paypal. (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013343.html#013343) Is there any way to get hold of someone else at the DMV, who might make more sense?

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Dear DMV,
Kafka novels are not utopian tales or instruction manuals for how to run any kind of office or agency. So cut that shit out right now.
No Love,
kenjari.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Bleah. I just went through something similar with my health insurance. I empathize.

I hope that many good things happen to you today in compensation and that sleep comes back soon and brings you flowers and a box of good films.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

I wish I could offer you advice. So:

*hugs*

[zdenka]

Wow, that sounds idiotic on their part. I recommend waiting until you have more spoons (or recruiting a friend/family member who has more spoons) and then call back to try again. If you get someone equally obdurate, demand to speak to their supervisor. I utterly loathe bureaucracy myself, so I completely sympathize.

[gwynnega]

How utterly infuriating. It sounds like a scene from Brazil except, of course, for the important distinction of not being entertaining. Argh.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Oh, feh and sympathy. Bureaucracy gets no points.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Who wrote this damned play?

As for the DMV--execrations upon their miserable tinpot heads.

Nine

[gaudynight78.livejournal.com]

When I had my 12-week ultrasound with Peter, for some reason it was offsite at the building that used to house the medical clinic we went to when I was a kid. (It's still a medical building, but it now houses a bunch of different practices, rather than a single comprehensive one.)

I was covered by Yale Health at the time, yet somehow the computer managed to come up with (a) my maiden name, (b) my childhood address, (c) the health insurance I had been on when I was covered as a dependent on my father's state employee health plan, and send the bill there.

This was in 2007. I had not had that name since 2002, that address since 1999, or that health plan since 1996.

Thankfully, all I had to do was make one phone call and say, "You idiots, I'm on Yale Health and should not be being billed for this at all, let alone under the insurance I had eleven years ago". I mention it simply to offer further evidence that the Ghosts of Bureaucracy Past can be surprisingly persistent and astonishingly random.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

All the other junk you've had to deal with aside, your first paragraph sounds like a great opening to a short story or poem. :)